Searching The Room For An Empty Seat
by sugarkid
Summary: Beth Langdon is Regina's secretary and she can't explain why she's head over heels with Dr Whale. Whale didn't even bother to call her back after their date. Meanwhile, in Geneva, Victor Frankenstein cares only for two things: to prove himself to his father and marry the love of his life, Elizabeth Lavenza.
1. Chapter 1

Father had been gone for far too long.

Gerhardt did not believe him, but Victor knew he was right. Victor _always_ knew when he was right and argued the point until everybody else acknowledged it. All Gerhardt wanted to do was play hide and seek outside, despite the obvious fact that it had been pouring with rain for the past three days and the roads outside were dangerous underfoot. Victor had watched the rain from the study window, pretending he was some sort of gargoyle warding away intruders, all while his brother pretended to be a commander with an army of tin soldiers.

Victor and Gerhardt were close in age, but Victor's seriousness and stern countenance was the joke of the family, while his brother loved little more than to play. Whenever Mother walked into the study, her starched skirts sweeping the floor with every step, she would comb her soft fingers through Victor's golden curls and laugh at his frown.

"My boy," she said once, "you're going to look like an old man before you are seven if you insist on glowering so."

"But Father isn't back yet," he had protested. "What if something terrible happened to him on the way to Italy?"

Mother had laughed and sat down next to him, stroking his face as if he had made some sort of joke.

"Your father took his Longsword and three other men," she said. "He'll be back soon, you'll see. Worry not, my dear."

That should have been the end of it, yet still he worried. He had seen the way Father's face darkened the day he received the letter from Milan, the letter that had started it all. Mother and Father had talked in whispers about it when they thought he and Gerhardt were asleep and, though Victor had been unable to make out any of the words, he could tell that they were talking about a very serious matter indeed.

Every night since Father's departure, Victor had stared at the ceiling, waiting for the thunderous knock at the door from some stranger that had found his horse in a ditch by the road. An old friend of Father's lived in Milan, he knew, though in truth he remembered very little of the man. A few anecdotes here and there were the foundations of everything he knew about Vincento Lavenza; an Italian that Father had shared many a glass of wine with at university. Father never went into the man's history in great depth, but Victor did know that he returned to Milan after finishing his university studies and inherited a generous dowry from his Sardinian bride. Letters from him were something of a rarity after that.

Somewhat ironically, the first night that Victor slept soundly was the night Father returned from Milan, accompanied by the three men Mother had promised and half a dozen crates. The most precious cargo of all, however, rode beside Father.

Neither Victor nor Gerhardt could believe their eyes at breakfast when they found Father there, looking for all the world as if he had never left. However, while Gerhardt ran to embrace him, Victor merely stood there and gaped. He had been so convinced that something dreadful had happened for so long that it was difficult to accept the alternative, even when it stood living and breathing before him.

"My, you've grown!" Father observed, ignoring the very obvious fact that he was still a giant in their eyes and the pair of them had to crane their necks to see him eye to eye.

"Did you bring me a present?" asked Gerhardt. Father laughed and glanced across at Victor, reaching out his spare arm so that he could join the embrace. The façade of maturity that Victor had created dissolved in that moment and he was a boy again running into the arms of his father. Father had not shaved in quite some time and his stubble was rough against Victor's face, but the boy cared little.

Victor had always known Father would return safely, just as he always knew when he was right.

"Now, about that present," said Father, rising to his feet and walking towards the door, motioning for them both to follow. Victor was excited despite himself.

Father led them to one of the unused reception rooms, considered too small to be of any real everyday usage.

"I'm afraid that Italy was rather…difficult and I could not bring you a present in the traditional sense. However," Father quickly added, noticing that Gerhardt's bottom lip was starting to wobble, "I think the pair of you will appreciate this much more."

He knocked at the door and whispered a few words to the maid that responded. Father led them both inside and that was when they saw the girl.

She was about Victor's age, with dark Italian hair and bright hazel eyes, dressed in an elaborate white frock that had grown grey from excessive wear. The unused reception room appeared to have been converted into a storage room of sorts and she was in the midst of unpacking a crate of dolls, though the second Father walked into the room she immediately rose to her feet and dropped into a well-practiced curtsey.

"This is Elizabeth Lavenza," said Father, "and she is going to be your playmate from now on. Please show her every kindness and courtesy."

Victor Frankenstein had not yet reached his seventh year and his knowledge of girls was limited. That said, he always knew when he was right and he knew that was absolutely the case when he decided there and then, over the sound of his brother wailing that he would have much preferred a toy train, that Elizabeth Lavenza was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

Beth Langdon.

Whenever Dr Whale closed his eyes he could visualise her clear as day, as if she was standing right in front of him. The day she registered at his clinic he'd been going through something of a dry spell, so she was a blessing in more ways than one. He'd been so mesmerised by her hazel eyes and seemingly endless legs that he offered her a physical right there and then and, blushing furiously, she slipped him her number.

Whale was in heaven. The shy ones were always the dirtiest.

Beth answered on the third ring and, if anything, was a little too enthusiastic about visiting the nightclub he suggested. Storybrooke didn't have much nightlife, and _The Cat's Eye _was a clear indicator why. Most of the music was decades old and the paintwork had been peeling for as long as anyone remembered. Still, Beth arrived in a sexy little polka dot dress and clapped her hands together at the sight of the place.

"I love it!" she shouted over the pounding bass line. "It's so kitsch!"

Whale had no clue what she meant by that, but he did know that her dress looked a hundred times better on his bedroom floor. She made French toast the morning after, by which point he'd already lost her number.


	3. Chapter 3

Beth remembered very little of her life before Storybrooke but of one thing she was absolutely certain: there had been no sexy doctors there.

She took a meaningful sip of her coffee and leaned back into her chair, staring at the ceiling. If she concentrated hard enough she was half convinced that she wouldn't hear the laughter coming from the other side of the diner. Miss-Cinnamon-Roll-And-Latte had great cheekbones but her laugh…ugh…it was a force to be reckoned with, half emergency brakes and half pterodactyl.

Tuesday afternoons had once been Beth's favourite time of the week – the one time she could sit in peace and switch off her phone, knowing that she could take her sweet time. Regina took Henry to whatever social event she deemed acceptable on Tuesday afternoons (football was for peasants as far as she was concerned, while swimming classes were incredibly unhygienic), leaving Beth a welcome break to catch up on whatever TV show she was watching or her personal finances.

Looking back, Beth had no idea what possessed her to apply for the job of live-in Nanny all of those years ago, only that she had found herself in Regina's office with a copy of an impressive looking résumé in her hands. She hadn't known the reason why she had thought to apply for a job as a glorified slave, nor could she remember ever applying in the first place, but for some reason it felt like getting the position was of the utmost importance so she pretended she had planned it all.

Within weeks she was up at all hours of the night, running all of the last minute errands and changing all of the particularly toxic diapers. She didn't care how much Regina claimed otherwise, she knew that Henry saved all of the worst ones for her.

Still, she knew she had plenty to be thankful for. Her wages were generous and Henry was a sweet kid when he wasn't covered in vomit or worse. He saved his cutest chuckles and best drawings for her and, when he started school, she was financially stable enough to move into a three bedroomed house that was more like a palace on the inside. She would have been happy in an apartment complex, but Storybrooke didn't have very many of those lying around. Regina claimed they were unsightly and Beth had overheard her snarling that opinion down the phone enough times to commit it to memory.

When Henry was a baby, Tuesday was the day Regina took him to get weighed and have his booster shots, a job she would not allow anyone else to do for her. She made it very clear when they met that Beth was the Nanny, not a second Mom. She was only to step in and help when it was absolutely necessary. Beth's job was to ensure the Mills household ran smoothly and that ranged from driving Henry around to typing up documents while Regina was busy to picking up groceries at three in the morning because the Smithsons were coming over for dinner and they hadn't tried Puttanesca. She had thought that as Henry grew older Regina would be only too happy to get rid of her and take care of things herself, but the Mayor caught her off guard with that one too. Instead Regina promoted her, so to speak, giving her a cell phone that intercepted the phone line to the Mayoral office.

"You have so much free time now," had been Regina's exact words. "I might as well give you something else to do."

Beth laughed every time she remembered complaining about her workload while Henry was a baby. Back then her main responsibility had been cleaning barf off his face and cooking lasagne.

Tuesday afternoons were the closest thing she had to a day off and she used the time well, stuffing her face with Granny Lucas' grilled cheese sandwiches and comparing notes with Ruby over whose boss was the bigger slave driver. It used to be her time of peace and quiet, of relaxation and guilty pleasures. However, that all changed when _he_ decided to spend his lunch hour there.

Beth didn't know what irritated her more about him – whether it was the self-satisfied way he entered the room, the way he jokingly flirted with Granny Lucas as he placed his order, the idiotic way he laughed at his own jokes or how on Fridays he made a point to wear a joke tie.

His presence in Granny's Diner left a bitter aftertaste in Beth's mouth. She had overheard him put the moves on Miss-Pain-Chocolat, Miss-Macaroni-Cheese-And-Apple-Juice, Miss-Wedding-Ring-But-Pretending-Otherwise, Miss-Banana-Milkshake-Ohohoho-You-Know-There's-An-Innuendo-There and various other girls whose names she couldn't even remember so she very much doubted _he_ did.

_Look at him,_ she would think to herself, _acting as if he owns the place. One of these days I'll sit here and laugh as a girl throws hot coffee in his face._

It was a satisfying mental image, but the second she turned to look at him and took in the sight of his broad smile and golden hair that curled at the tips, she found herself sinking deeper into her chair.

_And I'll be the one to run over there and say what a bitch she was._

Beth knew Whale's tricks so well because she had fallen for them herself. She was hardly the type to give out her number, let alone have one night stands, but something about Dr Whale had felt so right. She had known from the second they got back to his apartment at the end of their date that it was going to end in sex and, what's more, she knew deep down that it probably wasn't a good idea. However, it was the same sort of fundamentally bad idea as having an extra glass of wine on girl's night or licking icing from the mixing bowl. She knew that it was a bad idea, yet she was also inexplicably aware that if she didn't indulge in that little flight of fancy she would never forgive herself.

She had been a virgin up until that point, something he didn't comment on until she had her head on his chest and could hear his heartbeat. He stroked his fingers through her hair – a gesture that diverted her attentions away from the ache between her thighs – and flashed that devilish grin.

"So how was that for a test drive?" he asked, in the sort of tone that implied he didn't need her to reply. For some reason she found that arrogance incredibly sexy.

At that moment there was no other place she would rather be and nobody else she would rather be with. When she fell asleep she slept soundly, in a state of deep relaxation that she had never known before. Her parents were long dead, but she was sure that was how it must have felt to sleep in their arms – to close her eyes with the knowledge that the person whose arms enclosed her and whose heartbeat resonated in her ears loved her very deeply and would protect her from anything.

She attributed it to hormones at first, for the deep affection she felt seemed ridiculous to her. She was well aware of the fact that she barely knew the man, that they had not had any deep, intelligent conversations, had not come to any kinds of agreement about what sorts of books they enjoyed or which Sting album was the best. And yet somehow, amidst all of the confusion, everything about him made sense to her. It was almost as if her knowledge of him extended beyond all realms of possibility, beyond all logic. She wondered if she was falling in love with him and decided to give the idea more thought when he called for their next date.

Except he never did call and she seemed to be the only person in Storybrooke that was surprised.

She turned to look at Miss-Cinnamon-Roll-And-Latte once again, miserably taking in the way that Whale ignored her pterodactyl cries and focussed on her rear. She half wondered if she had done something far, far worse and-

-Beth shrieked in pain as somebody flicked her ear. She turned to see Granny Lucas glaring at her, a hot apple pie in her arms.

"What was that for?!"

Granny Lucas sighed deeply and placed the pie on the table, sidling into the seat across from her. Beth rubbed her earlobe and shifted her papers out of the way of the pie. The last thing she needed was Regina complaining that it had burn marks on it.

"I'm only going to say this once," said Granny. "_You_ girl are an idjit!"

"…Thank you?"

Granny sighed loudly and leaned in closer so that she could speak more openly.

"Now you listen here," she said, "I see you week in, week out giving that guy the gooey eyes. I'm worried that if this carries on any longer I'll have to wipe you off my floor. Listen to ole Granny, since I know a thing or two about men. _He_," she indicated Whale and outright glared at him when he noticed, "ain't interested in _you_. Only thing he's interested in is the horizontal tango. What you need to do is forget about him and find yourself a nice young man that'll treat you right. Do you think you can do that?"

Honestly, Beth was fairly certain she couldn't, but hell if she was risking the wrath of Granny.

"I-"

Miss-Cinnamon-Roll-And-Latte laughed out loud at something Whale said.

"I have to get back to the surgery," Beth heard him say. "I'll see you later? About 9?"

"Well?" said Granny, drawing her back to reality.

"Oh, absolutely," said Beth, laughing out loud as if she meant it. "He's _so_ last century!"


	4. Chapter 4

It took several months to fully unpack all of the boxes from Milan – a process Elizabeth never wanted to end. Once her things were unpacked that was the end of everything. She was officially one of the Frankenstein family and would never return to Italy unless she married back into one of the grand families. It was a sad thought, for Elizabeth had loved everything about Milan. She had loved the near endless music of voices and footsteps on the cold stone floors and the smell of ink and wine that permeated everything. Even tucked up in bed at night with her blankets drawn to her chin, Elizabeth could hear the voices of her father and his friends, the servants exchanging gossip in hushed tones and the wind in the trees outside. She was never alone and that was the way she preferred it.

Milan was like a novel she had read so many times that she had memorised every line. She knew which twists and turns of the manor house led where, which kitchen staff could be persuaded to save her titbits of Gorgonzola and walnuts and, on the occasions that she went out into the city itself, she knew which side street she was on simply by sniffing the air.

If she had to compare it to anything, Elizabeth would have compared her homeland to a cup of the wine her countrymen drank in such vast quantities. A long time before she arrived in Geneva, before the Bad Things Happened, Elizabeth convinced one of her Papa's salon friends to let her take a sip of their wine. They had laughed at the way she instantly spat it out, quite disgusted. Elizabeth remembered asking them how anyone could like something so vile and bitter and the man had laughed, summoned a group of people over to his table and started an entire existential debate about it.

"It is what makes you Italian," was the closest thing to an answer she got from the experience and even then she did not truly understand until later.

Mama was born on the quiet island of Sardinia, a long way away from Milan. Papa always said she was beautiful, while everybody else said she was rich. It did not seem to matter whether or not she was clever or kind so long as her pockets were heaving and her eyelashes long. Elizabeth's only clue to what her Mama had been like was the occasional visit from her Sardinian Grandmother, who had been a widow for a very long time and seemed to disapprove of everything. Grandmama hated Milan, its bustling streets and loud noises, something that Elizabeth could not bring herself to understand. How could anyone hate the place she loved so much?

Elizabeth had learned to love Milan the same way she would learn to love wine as an adult. Milan was overwhelming to outsiders, heady on the senses and overflowing with history. There was probably a time when she had hated it too, back when she was still an infant. Over time she had made it her own, taken in the complexities and ingredients and found them agreeable, so when an outsider found her home vile and disgusting she could not help but feel the same sense of amusement at their inexperience that her father's friends had all of that time ago.

If Milan was a cup of wine then Geneva was a glass of milk. It was quiet, surrounded by flowers with mild perfumes she did not recognise and endless acres of woodland that she was told she could not explore. The kitchen staff outright stared at her when she entered their domain. The people were pale and sickly looking and their _hair_. Elizabeth had never seen yellow hair before and she had not been able to stop staring ever since.

Elizabeth was grateful for the generosity the Frankensteins had bestowed upon her since her arrival, but she had to admit that for one used to a vibrant, wine-cup existence, the transition was difficult. Geneva was nourishing and necessary for her growth into a respectable lady, but it was also devoid of Milan's colour and utterly unexciting as a result.

Lady Frankenstein was alien to her in every way that it was possible for a person to be so. She was so softly spoken and pale that she quite frightened Elizabeth the first time they met, giving the impression of some sort of spectre. She was the polar opposite of every woman Elizabeth had learned to respect and Elizabeth did not know how to approach or even speak to her. All of the noble women in Italy wore brightly coloured gowns and spoke their minds without restraint. Lady Frankenstein never once contradicted her husband.

"Do you have a favourite lullaby, my dear?" Lady Frankenstein asked her once, as she combed the tangles from her hair. "I would very much like to learn it so that I might sing you to sleep."

Elizabeth's Nanny was a wide woman from Naples, who cursed like a fishwife and spat like one too. She dragged the comb through Elizabeth's hair with such ferocity that sometimes she had rubbed her head afterwards to double check that all of her hair was still there. Nanny had been coarse, calling her 'goat-fucker' whenever she misbehaved, but she was also the only person to ever sing her a lullaby. She was not sure she wanted the Frankenstein woman, who never once pulled at her hair or insulted her, to know the words that soothed her. They were Italian words, full of Italian memories and she did not want them to lose their meaning.

And yet the Frankenstein woman's eyes were so kind that she knew she could not refuse her. Elizabeth closed her eyes to sing the words, words of ocean lullabies and a sleeping lover with lost memories. She did not realise that tears were streaming from her eyes until Lady Frankenstein made a noise of disapproval and moved towards her bedroom door. Elizabeth opened her eyes just in time to see the blurred shape of the boy crouching in the doorway, but by the time she had wiped away the tears he was gone.

The weather outside was mild and Lady Frankenstein often ushered Elizabeth into the library to play with her sons as if it was some treat. She supposed for a milky woman such as that, spending the day staring at wildflowers through a window was a wonderful treat indeed. The boys looked just like their mother, all yellow hair and bright blue eyes and they stared at her as if she was the one that was strange, not the other way around.

The older of the two boys answered to Victor and, although he could only be a couple of years older than his brother, he walked and talked as if he was already the lord and Master. While his brother was happy to roll around on the floor with his toys, making all sorts of battle cries and noises, Victor preferred to engross himself in the works of great minds such as Paracelsus and Agrippa, turning the pages and clearing his throat most dramatically whenever Gerhardt's impersonations of battle grew too loud.

Elizabeth would watch them both from her own spot in one of the window seats. She was familiar with the words Victor preferred to read as they were her father's books of choice too and something of a favourite topic at his salon meetings. Elizabeth herself much preferred poetry, skimming through the yellowed pages of some collection and letting her eyes drift away to the wildflowers outside every so often. How she wished she could just go outside and pick one, bury her face in the soft petals and familiarise herself with its scent. She wanted to fill her dull, musty room with the smell of a thousand flowers.

The day after she sang her lullaby to Lady Frankenstein, Victor did not come to dinner. Elizabeth could not help but wonder why.

"My Lord Frankenstein," she said, as she arranged her napkin. "Are we to start without Victor?"

"A terrible business," was his response. "Victor is in seclusion for the rest of the day."

Victor was hardly the type to warrant such discipline, so Elizabeth was more than a little bit curious.

"If I might be so presumptuous, could I ask why?"

"Presumptuous, yes, but since you asked me so nicely it would be incredibly rude not to answer. One of the maidservants caught him trailing mud in the library."

Now that _was_ interesting.

After dinner Elizabeth and Gerhardt retired to the library as they always did. Elizabeth picked out her usual volume of poetry and took her seat, glancing across every now and then at the empty space where Victor usually sat. The servants had mopped up any hint of mud that he might have left, yet still she found herself scanning the floor for footprints.

It was quite some time before she opened her book, justifying the matter by wondering how on earth she was to concentrate on poetry when such a mystery loomed over her shoulders. She need not have worried so, for when she finally came to open the book the solution fell into her lap in the form of a wildflower. It was small, pale pink and smelled heavenly and was so soft to the touch that it could only have been placed in between the pages of her book a matter of hours before.

Elizabeth Lavenza learned the benefit of a milk-glass existence as she bumped into Lord Frankenstein some time later.

"Ah, Miss Elizabeth," he said. "Are you lost?"

She smiled her sweetest, most charming smile and shook her head, showing him the book in her hands for the very first time.

"No, my Lord," she said. "I came to bring this to Victor, so that he might think about his actions."

Lord Frankenstein took the book from her and turned it over in his hands. It was a copy of the Holy Bible, older than Elizabeth herself. Lord Frankenstein nodded at her approvingly and tucked it under his arm.

"I shall make sure he gets it," he said. "And I shall tell him it was from you."

Any of her Italian friends would have questioned her motives immediately, flicked through the pages and checked for signs of deceit. They would have known that her only interest in religion came from boredom, a by-product of life as the only child of a man a man who taught her not to pray before bed, but instead to list three facts she knew for certain.

Elizabeth did not sleep a wink that night, instead twirling the pink flower round and round in her fingers and taking in the sweet scent. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine the look on Victor's face when he opened the Bible to find it wasn't a Bible after all, but a rare alchemical text banned in several countries for its heretical content. It had been easy enough to swap the covers and she wondered if he was sitting in his room right then, absorbing the words.

Milk was simple and boring, yes, but it was also a blank canvas, open to remould. Elizabeth would be lying if she said the thought of being that influence saddened her. No, she was the catalyst for change that alchemists and poets wrote about in equal measure.

When she finally did fall asleep it was with the wildflower next to her, dreaming of happy endings and meadows and kisses in the snow.


	5. Chapter 5

Melody was on the phone to her boyfriend when Whale got back to the hospital, her cell phone positioned between her ear and shoulder so that she had a hand free to continue filling out medical forms. She glanced over her shoulder as he walked in but that was the closest he got to a hello.

"Honey," she said as Whale took off his jacket and draped it over the office chair. "I have nothing against your parents, it's just that the last time I cooked them anything they said they'd had better in some hostel in Detroit and made off with the good china. Yeah, I know, you didn't invite them… I know, I know…sweetheart, it's not your fault…look, we both know what happened when _my_ folks came over."

Melody placed the signed papers in a folder and stood up to file them away in one of the cabinets, her entire body crooked from the effort of carrying on the phone conversation as well.

"Yeah, yeah," she laughed out loud as she opened the filing cabinet. "I know. Look, if the worst comes to the worst we can pretend we moved house."

Melody Sands was about the same age as he was, give or take a few years, and the closest thing to a secretary he had. He found her in his office one day, reorganising his paperwork into alphabetical order and, when he learned that she was there on the Mayor's orders, he hadn't particularly questioned it. He'd reasoned that she must have come from some impoverished background or known the Mayor in some way before moving to Storybrooke. Most importantly, (to Whale, anyway), she had curves in all of the right places and such fiery auburn hair that for all of the time he'd known her he'd remained convinced that she had to be a devil in bed.

"Uh huh," she said, lifting her coffee mug and taking a sip. "Well, I have been meaning to try out that sticky ribs recipe…"

A couple of minutes and countless I-love-you's later she finally hung up and looked at him for the first time, knitting her fingers together in a pyramid.

"So?"

"So what?"

"You look like the cat that got the cream."

"What I do on my lunch break is none of your concern."

His voice was stern, but he was smiling. Melody returned the smile and climbed up onto the desk, kicking one shoe off and then the other, cocking her head to one side and biting her bottom lip in that way she knew drove him crazy.

"Is that so?" she asked, watching as he approached with an expression of pure anticipation. "What about _who_ you do? Is that none of my business either?"

She reached out and skimmed her fingers along the edge of his belt buckle, fiddling with the fastening.

"Oh, that's absolutely your business."

She licked her lips and arched her back, reaching for a kiss. Whale leaned down to appease her.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Whale turned to look at it, half dazed and wondering what it was, the other certain that he knew what it was and that it couldn't be happening.

"Hello," Beth Langdon called out from the other side. "Doctor Whale? Are you in there?"

_Shit._

"I thought you cleared all of my appointments!" he hissed as he smoothed out his shirt and refastened his belt, shooing Melody into the closet. Melody pouted as she went, slowing her steps and making it as difficult as possible.

"I did," she hissed back. "Believe me, it wasn't easy."

Whale shoved her into the closet, rethinking his actions the second the door was closed and opening it again just to grab his jacket from the chair and throw it in after her.

"Whatever you do," he said. "Don't move!"


	6. Chapter 6

The closet was chilly and smelled of mothballs, so Melody hugged her knees to her chest and wrapped Whale's jacket around her shoulders. It smelled of him, she realised. That vile smell of coffee and cleanliness that lingered in every hospital. Melody knew that, by rights, she should have found that smell too much to bear, but instead she drew the jacket close and inhaled. She stroked her fingers into the lining, tracing them over the name tag, the stitching and down towards the pockets. She wasn't sure how long she was going to be stuck inside the closet, so she decided she might as well entertain herself with the only resource available.

It was almost exactly as she would have predicted. A half empty packet of peppermint chewing gum and a couple of quarters, probably stashed in there for speed. A couple of condoms, one glow in the dark and the other ribbed for those occasions where he was away from home. A card from _The Cat's Eye_ with various phone numbers scribbled on the back. Only one thing took her by surprise and that was the notebook. It was small and expensive looking, with a worn leather cover and crumpled pages. Melody checked no one was coming before opening to the first page.

The notebook was full of sketches, skilfully done. Melody could tell that many pages were missing, since there were gaps between pages and areas where the spine was almost completely exposed, leaving the jutted remains of whatever pages had been there rough under her fingers. Melody wondered if Whale was the artist and, if so, why he had never demonstrated such an incredible skill before.

The pictures varied in their subject matter, from a single, old fashioned shoe to an entire forest. The earlier sketches showed castles and parties and close ups of flowers, while the later ones were of the Storybrooke sign, of people sitting in Granny's diner and patients waiting in line for their appointments. One drawing showed a pair of entwined hands in such detail that if she reached out to prod the paper, she was certain that the hands would twitch.

Many of the later drawings were of a woman. Melody didn't know how she knew it was the same woman in every sketch, since every single one was left unfinished, but she did. The pose, the clothes, all of it was drawn in exuberant detail as if by sight – even the sketches of that woman in period clothing, the likes of which Melody had only ever seen in museums. One detail, however, was missing from each sketch and it was arguably the most important detail of all. That woman had no face, though it was clear from some sketches that Whale had tried to change that, only to erase the evidence by scribbling it out afterwards.

She was so overwhelmed by the attention to detail that she didn't spot the man at first. He blended in so well amongst the other people in the sketches that he didn't stand out at all. It was only when she scanned through the faces of group shots to marvel at how accurate they were and she realised that there was one man – the same man – in every drawing that she gave him a second glance. He was in the background of every picture, sitting on a bench or taking a sip of coffee or simply taking a stroll, never the main subject but there nonetheless. Melody didn't recognise him; his face was that of a stranger, similar in shape and form to Whale's, yet different…so different. He was muscular where Whale was lean, intense where Whale was detached.

A cold shiver ran along her spine when she noticed the man in other sketches too, emerging from the trees on the drawing of the Storybrooke sign, reflected in Ruby's wing mirror as she climbed out of her car, strolling along the streets of town. At the back of the notebook, there was a drawing of a burning building, the flames spreading through to the surrounding trees, filling everything with smoke. In the corner of the sketch she could see men running towards the building with buckets of water, horses being dragged out of the chaos, their eyes covered over to make them easier to control. Melody could make out the shape of a man walking through the smoke, seemingly unharmed and paying little heed to any of the confusion around him.


	7. Chapter 7

Whale opened the door and found himself looking into the nervous face of Beth Langdon. She was gasping for breath as if she'd been running and had an apple pie from Granny's in her arms.

"Miss Langdon?" he said, wondering what on earth she was doing there. He was fairly certain he hadn't invited her. His formality seemed to take her off guard and she appeared confused for a couple of seconds.

"Yeah, uh, yeah, I mean-"

"Is there something I can do for you?"

"I was wondering if I could talk to you," she said. "It's kind of important."

His heart froze in his chest.

_Oh God. She's pregnant._

"If it's a medical matter, I'm sure I can get you an appointment."

He had to get rid of her. Melody could clear an hour's worth of appointments at most and all he could think about was the look in her eyes as she had smoothed her hand along his belt buckle.

"Oh no, it's not a medical issue," was Beth's response. If he hadn't been so dangerously hard then he probably would have breathed a sigh of relief. He dug his teeth into his bottom lip to try and distract himself from the discomfort of the situation. Against his better judgement, he motioned for her to step inside.

"Come in, come in," he said, turning to face Beth for the first time in months. It was difficult to flat out avoid anyone in Storybrooke and Whale had probably passed her on the street a few times without realising, considering that it was incredibly easy not to notice her at all.

The second Beth noticed his eyes were on her, she seemed to retreat into her shell again and suddenly became fascinated by the bookshelf next to her. The right of the bookshelf belonged to Melody and contained numerous mini-novellas, potted plants and framed photographs of herself, her boyfriend and the dogs. The left of the bookshelf belonged to Whale and he had filled it with vintage medical journals from Mr Gold's shop, some of which dated back to as far back as the 1800s. Whale enjoyed the feel of the leather bound covers and embossed lettering under his fingertips and could scour the texts for hours, taking in the old fashioned diagrams and Latin terms.

Beth reached up as if she meant to touch one of the books. It was Whale's favourite, one of the rarest and most expensive in his collection. Gold had charged him a small fortune for it, claiming it was a masterpiece, exquisite and very rare indeed. The dust jacket of that book belonged to a Bible, but the true virtue of the book itself was that it was actually an alchemical journal written centuries beforehand. Gold had laughed at him when he asked why anyone would swap the covers, claiming that anyone who remembered why was long gone.

The second Beth's hand came remotely close to it she clenched her fist as if she had been burned and turned back to look at him.

"It's just that Regina asked me to pick up an apple pie for after dinner, but long story short, she's changed her mind about it and now it's all mine and it's kind of depressing eating an entire pie to myself, so I was wondering…if you wanted to…you could come over to my place and I could cook…something."

Whale knew the Mayor well enough to know that that was a flat out lie. She didn't even allow maple syrup in the house, let alone full fat pastry from Granny's Diner. Even if he hadn't known that for certain Beth's body language was defensive: her eyes darted from his face to the floor and her eyes were pleading.

He knew he already had plans for that evening with the girl he had met in the diner only a matter of minutes before, but none of that seemed to matter when he glanced across at the clock on the wall across from him and realised that he only had half an hour left with Melody.

"Sure," he said. "Your place at six?"

He had no intention of showing up, but she looked so happy at his consent that he told himself that at the very least he would call her to cancel. As she left his office she was making plans for the night's proceedings and telling him all about how her Grandmother was from Milan so the food would probably be Italian.

Melody got straight to business when she emerged from the closet, pushing him down onto the desk and straddling him as she pulled off his shirt and tie.

"So who was that?" she asked between kisses. "She seemed to really like you."

Whale laughed out loud, the laughs turning into moans as she trailed kisses up his jugular.

"What, Beth? That's because she doesn't know me," he said, closing his eyes as she slid a hand down the front of his trousers. "Not the real me."

It wasn't until midnight, as the girl from the diner slept on one side of him and Melody slept on the other, that it occurred to him he probably should have called Beth to cancel.


	8. Chapter 8

Geneva was beautiful in the summer, an easy enough conclusion to reach, yet Victor did not discover it until he was nine years old. He had spent every summer of his life staring out at that bright blue sky and seemingly endless carpet of brightly coloured flowers, so the idea that it was anything particularly special was strange to him. Elizabeth, however, thought quite differently. She loved the outdoors and made it her mission to learn its every secret.

The first summer after Elizabeth's arrival, Victor and Gerhardt had to settle for following her around while she investigated everything. Gerhardt's legs were too short to keep up with her and Victor himself could only just keep her in sight once she started to sprint. It did not seem to matter that she was wearing heavy skirts and shoes that were not made for running – once Elizabeth set off it was like trying to race the wind. They would find her at the bottom of a ditch or up a tree, covered in dirt and leaves, but with an enormous smile on her face because she had discovered something new.

Mother often scolded them for not taking better care of Elizabeth, particularly after the three of them came home with severely upset stomachs from eating the berries off a bush that Elizabeth found. When she realised that they tasted disgusting, she challenged the boys to eat an entire mouthful.

"Why on earth would you tell Elizabeth to eat them?" Mother asked as she dabbed at Victor's forehead. If he hadn't felt so ill, he would have laughed out loud.

Gerhardt was much taller that summer Victor turned nine, having had something of a growth spurt. He could finally keep up with Elizabeth and occasionally even overtake her on the odd occasions that they raced, something that Elizabeth would not take lying down. She loved to challenge Gerhardt, keeping a tally of how many times she had outmatched him. Victor rarely got involved in their squabbles, deeming it all child's play, though on the occasions that he was asked for his opinion he usually sided with Elizabeth. Her temper was far more frightening than his brother's.

That summer, the game of choice was Knights and Dragons. The rules were simple. One person was the Knight, the other was a Maiden and the third was a Dragon. The Dragon would steal away the Maiden and it was the Knight's job to get her back using any means necessary. It was little more than a game of pretend, but it was a decent enough way to pass the time on those hazy summer afternoons. Gerhardt knighted himself and Elizabeth, insulted at the very thought of spending her days screaming for help just because she wore skirts, decided that she would be a witch instead of a dragon and that left Victor. He had to admit that he did not mind being the Maiden, despite how many japes Elizabeth made about how Gerhardt was coming to claim his Lady Love. As the Maiden he was not required to do very much, so he was able to carry on reading in between battles.

Victor abandoned Agrippa that year in favour of one of Paracelsus' heady volumes and found himself taken in by the man's ideas. The notion that health was a delicate balance between man and nature and that happiness could be interlinked with health was not new to him but until that summer, where he spent many days rolling in dirt and laughing at the antics of the other two, he had never felt he understood it. Usually Victor caught the sniffles during the summer months and spent a week or two in bed, something the physicians claimed was a result of his poor constitution. He often wondered about Elizabeth and Gerhardt, who were happiest while outside and always laughing at _something_. He had never known either of them succumb to illness and wondered if that meant they were proof of the theory.

He had felt nothing but happiness until he reached that conclusion. He knew he should have felt happy sitting outside, with sunlight warming his back and shoulders but the thought that Gerhardt and Elizabeth were proof of the theory made him curious. He wondered if they had learned the truth of Paracelsus' words long before he had and that didn't make him happy at all. That made him envious.

Victor would glance up from his book and watch Elizabeth and Gerhardt as they battled amongst the flowers – Gerhardt waving an imaginary sword or a stick if he could find one, while Elizabeth chanted made up spells in Latin as a nod to Agrippa – and for that moment he felt closer to the Garden of Eden than he had ever thought possible during Bible study. Gerhardt, fairer in face and stronger in body than he would ever be, was surely the ideal, the sculpted masterwork, while Elizabeth was his worthy equal. The occasions where the two of them put aside their differences to cause mischief were the ones where the house rang out with laughter and flurried footsteps.

Victor didn't feel happy at all looking upon the Garden of Eden he had concocted in his head, knowing that by his own logic he was almost certainly excluded from it. For the first time that summer, the heat of the sun on his back made him feel dizzy and the sound of Elizabeth and Gerhardt's battle made his stomach heave and his head pound. The smell of the flowers, which had once been so pleasing to his senses, left him feeling nauseous. While Elizabeth and Gerhardt were quite distracted by whether or not an ice spell would stop a Knightly sword, Victor left the battlefield and wandered back into the house.

Father was standing in the doorway, a half empty cup of wine in his hand and he looked as if he had been standing there for a while, watching the game unfold. Victor did not know if it was the shadows of the doorway cutting across his face, but a shiver rippled up his spine as he looked into the older man's eyes. In a perfect world, Father would have looked upon him in surprise and urged him to go back, but he did not. Instead, and this was the part that Victor never forgot, he looked straight at him as if the realisation that had made him feel so utterly ill was something he had known all along.

Victor locked himself in his room and remained in bed for the rest of the day, feverish and alone. Well. In a matter of speaking. Quite some time after his departure from the battlefield, Elizabeth knocked at his door, breathless as if she had been running.

"Victor!" She called through the mahogany, rapping her knuckles against the wood. "Victor, come back! Why did you leave?"

He did not think she would understand about Eden, so instead he closed his eyes and pretended he couldn't hear her. The more he ignored her, the louder she knocked, until her pleas were muffled sobs and it was dark outside. Housemaid after housemaid and even Mother tried to prise her away, but she was far too stubborn to leave. In the end they had to get the gamekeeper, who didn't fear her scratches and bites, to drag her to bed. Victor squeezed his eyes shut as her screams grew further and further away.

The next morning he felt a lot better and decided that he fancied a spot of breakfast, though the second he opened his bedroom door that notion soon skipped his mind. She was fast asleep, yes, and in her nightgown, but there was no mistaking the sleeping form of Elizabeth Lavenza slumped by his door. He didn't know how long she had been there and he certainly hadn't heard her knock, but the second he tapped her on the arm she jump-started into action, as if ready for fight or flight. When she saw him standing there, she climbed to her feet and stared at him.

"Victor," she said. "I…I'm sorry."

He could not help but stare at her, quite astonished.

"What?"

"Well that's why you left, isn't it? It's because I wouldn't let you be the Dragon."

She was so serious about it, so serious and so sorry, that he accepted her apology outright. He was not entirely sure how he would explain the truth to her anyway and, what's more, she was so happy that he seemed to have forgiven her that she gave him a kiss on the cheek and took his hand in hers.

"Promise you will come out and play today," she begged. "It's so boring playing Knights and Dragons without you to keep things fair."

"Elizabeth, we both know you don't play fair."

"But say you will!"

Against his better judgement, Victor agreed.

Later on that day, Elizabeth did something she had never done before. When Gerhardt arrived to take on his usual role as the Knight, she stopped him in his tracks.

"Today we are going to do things differently," she said, in the sort of tone that nobody who knew her argued with. "Today, I am going to be the Great Knight of this land and Victor here is my Lord Husband. You shall be the dragon that means to tear us both to shreds."

Gerhardt hated the idea and wrinkled up his nose with disgust. Victor leaned back, ready for the inevitable fireworks to ensue.

"You can't be a Knight! You're a girl!"

"Are you frightened I'll be a better Knight than you?"

"Of course not, but-"

"Then what's your problem? Both Victor and I shall fight back, so this shall be an amazing challenge for you. Or are you frightened of that as well?"

Gerhardt pouted and Victor chuckled to himself.

"I don't want to be a dragon," Gerhardt protested. "All they do is blow fire."

Elizabeth sighed deeply and rubbed her temples, similar in fashion to the way Father did when he was much tried. Victor could not help but find it quite amusing that she had acquired his mannerisms without realising it. Finally, the conclusive thought seemed to come to her and she looked at Gerhardt once again. He stared back at her with a defiant expression across his face, one that he had picked up from her, now that Victor thought about it.

"Fine," she said, "you can just be a monster. Decide your powers and strengths on your own, as shall we."

This seemed to pacify Gerhardt, for he did not say anything else until the start of the game. It was the first time Victor had been anything other than the Maiden and, what's more, he had forgotten to bring a book outside with him. He could not think of anything he wanted his character to be or what abilities it should have. All he could think about was Paracelsus' innumerable theories and he wasn't entirely certain that those would help him.

It wasn't until Victor was nine years old and aiming whatever weapon he had scientifically forged at his brother that he realised how beautiful Geneva could be in the summer. He and Elizabeth evaded the Monster many times, ignoring the numerous occasions Gerhardt insisted that the Monster was a good, honest person underneath. Elizabeth's default response as the defender of the land was that no monster could ever be good and it was her job to cut off his head with her holy sword.

By midday, Elizabeth and Victor had completely lost Gerhardt and they collapsed in a heap on the grass.

"I haven't had this much fun in such a long time," Elizabeth said quite woozily and within minutes she was fast asleep. Victor wondered how long she had sat outside his bedroom door.

He felt he had to agree with her, for he struggled to remember a time when he had last felt so alive. He had never noticed how blue the sky was before, how soft the grass was against his face, or what sweet music Elizabeth's laughter was to his ears. Many an author had tried to explain the chemical processes of what made such miracles possible, but for the first time in his life Victor felt he was able to appreciate the simplicity of looking upon the sky and not knowing the intricacies that made it so. Right then, lying in the grass with Elizabeth sleeping next to him, Victor felt -however temporarily- that he could forget his doubts and fears and that was the most beautiful thing of all.


	9. Chapter 9

Melody Sands always made the same resolution on New Year's Eve. It was something of a sad tradition, since she could never tell anyone else what her resolution was. As the clock struck twelve, Melody would close her eyes, take a swig of whatever beverage she had in her hand and make the same promise to herself.

_From now on I'm going to stop lying._

It started as an innocent enough habit, a means to an end more than anything else. She could barely even remember the first lie she told, though she imagined that it was something along the lines of whether or not her friend's thighs looked fat or if she had done her algebra homework. All Melody knew was that before long she was a compulsive liar and couldn't spend a day without fabricating something.

She would tell her boyfriend that they were out of Captain Crunch when half the box was left so she didn't feel quite so bad about helping herself to a second bowl. When they took that giant leap and moved in together, Melody had flat out lied about liking the place simply because she was bored of going on tours of apartments that all seemed to have the same structural problems and dry rot. Melody made up at least three of the points on her résumé and exaggerated most of the others, though she didn't complain when it landed her a decent job at the hospital. She could finally afford cable and try out all of those fancy recipes she'd recommended to people in a half assed attempt to look like a domestic goddess.

Melody knew that the truth was important, if not _the _most important thing of all. Even so, the lies formed some kind of security reflex. It was almost as if deep down she knew that telling the truth would only get her in trouble, no matter how harmless the scenario was.

Her boyfriend would roll off her at three in the morning and her first instinct was to sigh and say what a wonderful lover he was. A co-worker would change her hairstyle and she would tell them it looked lovely even if it didn't.

Even her arrangement with Dr Whale was the result of a lie. She had fallen out with her boyfriend over something incredibly trivial, though at the time it felt like the end of the world. The heady concoction of fury and utmost conviction in how utterly right she was led her to _The Cat's Eye,_ where she bumped into her boss of all people. At that point, Melody had known very little about Dr Whale, though she knew enough about doctors to understand that he probably had an ego the size of Texas. She wasn't too thrilled to see him at a nightclub when she was already feeling miserable, but he barely even seemed to notice, instead offering to buy her a drink and dancing with her to song after song after song.

He asked her if she was single. She said yes.

Best lie of her life, for it turned out the guy would win gold in the bedroom Olympics. She could only guess that it was his understanding of anatomy and nerve endings that explained his expertise, since she couldn't fathom any other reason why he could flip her over from one position into another she hadn't previously known existed but felt so inexplicably good. She woke up the morning after with aching knuckles from gripping his bedrails so tightly. She had moaned quite loudly the first time he upped his pace and outright screamed when he hit that one bundle of nerves that made her see stars. Whale's neighbours started hitting the wall with a broom at that point, which prompted the good doctor to gag her with his tie. She had marks on her face where the fabric had rubbed against the skin and the first thing Whale said to her when he woke up was some matter-of-fact remark that he probably had an ointment for it somewhere.

She supposed that was what she liked so much about her meetings with Whale. Even after he discovered she wasn't as single as she had let on, he didn't judge her. He didn't even ask her why she'd lied to him. There was no deep, emotional connection between them, no pressure to say the right things at the right time like there was at home and keep the fires burning beyond the bedroom. She wasn't in love with him. He was just a drug and she was an addict and the day a woman came along that he truly loved she was sure she would back off.

When she thought of it that way, Melody was quite capable of lying to herself. She convinced herself that if she didn't love Whale then it didn't count as cheating, a thought process that helped her sleep easier at night. On the occasions that it didn't, she always had Whale to distract her.

Well, until recently.

Ever since she had seen Whale's notebook she had been unable to relax around him to the point where she couldn't even properly climax anymore. All she could think about was the strange man in every picture, the faceless woman and what on earth it could all possibly mean. She wished she had never let curiosity get the better of her and left the book well alone. Every time she closed her eyes the pictures came to mind, as vivid as if they were real. Melody wanted to ask Whale about them but she didn't know how.

Melody would find herself thinking about the sketches when she lapsed off into daydreams and it always filled her with the same sense of betrayal. Not so much that Whale was betraying her, but that she was betraying somebody else by returning to his bed so often with a song in her heart. After all, there was so much she didn't know about him. She knew every detail of his body by heart, every contour and sensitive spot, but that was all. He could have had a wife and 2.4 kids in Missouri for all she knew. Or, worse, he could have been storing 2.4 dead bodies in his wine cellar. The more Melody thought about that, the more it occurred to her Whale's neighbours hadn't objected to their nightly 'sessions' for a while.

She tried to think of some brilliant lie that would cover everything over as if by magic, but the more she did so, the more she got an uncomfortable feeling in her gut that just wouldn't go away. It was as if she had done something terrible, something she knew deep down was wrong but just couldn't put her finger on.

_I shouldn't be here_, she would find herself thinking every time she went to his place. _Not like this…not with…_

She knew that the only way she would be able to calm herself down was if someone far more intelligent than she was told her that the drawings meant nothing and since she couldn't ask Whale himself, there was only one other person in Storybrooke qualified to give her an answer.

* * *

Lady Frankenstein announced she was with child shortly after Elizabeth turned thirteen, something that caught the girl quite by surprise. She was such a gangly wisp of a thing that the very thought of a child taking root within her was strange indeed and Elizabeth could not help but stare whenever she walked past. She seemed to have hardly changed, humming the same tune as she combed Elizabeth's hair and skimming every knot the way she always had. The only clue that anything was happening at all was the way she would occasionally stop to rub her back.

The Lady's body was not the only one changing. Gone was the boyish body Elizabeth had grown so used to and replaced with the foundations of something quite different. She knew her time was coming, that she was on the cusp of girlhood and leaning right over the edge. Her hair was sleeker than it had been, her legs were longer and, while modest, she had enough of a bust to require a lady's dress.

Elizabeth was not entirely certain whether she liked the new, transformed her or not. When she tried on her first new dress – a sapphire affair, all silks and lace and heavier than anything she had ever owned in her life – she took a glance at her reflection in the mirror and stared for quite some time while the maids made the necessary adjustments. Lady Frankenstein had tears in her eyes, though Elizabeth was not entirely certain if that was because of the dress or the babe within her.

"How do you feel, my dear?"

Elizabeth stared at the girl in the blue dress that she supposed was her, yet for the life of her she could not recognise. That girl looked as if she had never spent her days climbing trees or exploring or flicking peas at Gerhardt when nobody was looking. She did not know that girl at all.

"I'm not sure, my Lady," she replied, prompting Lady Frankenstein to gasp and stand behind her, smoothing her fingers through Elizabeth's dark curls.

"I am sure that the magnificence of this gown has merely rendered you speechless," she said. "Heaven knows the workmanship is beyond anything I have seen in quite some time."

Elizabeth never forgot what she said next.

"This right here is what you were _born_ for, Elizabeth. See how it shines through?"

All Elizabeth could think at that point was that she could see nothing shining through, no confirmation of anything as Lady Frankenstein seemed so utterly convinced she should. All she could see was a boring girl she barely even recognised, much like her poor dead Mother, the more she thought about it.

Lady Frankenstein took her silence to mean agreement and signaled for the maids to bring in the next dress, sinking into a chair and rubbing her back while they did so. Elizabeth watched as they carried in an ivory affair with roses worked into the skirts and turned properly to look when she realised that it was a ball gown.

"Are we to have a dance, my Lady?"

Elizabeth had never been to a ball before, though she had heard from Victor that before they were born the Frankenstein household had been the most popular place in Europe for dances among the nobility.

"Once," he had said as if meaning to impress her, "the Grand Count arrived and asked Mother for a dance. Mother and Father weren't married then, so can you imagine if things had gone differently?! I could have been Dracula's son!"

Elizabeth knew that dances were not quite as romantic in real life as they were in stories. They served as the nobility's cattle market, the place where everyone dressed up in finery and danced with everybody else's sons and daughters to show how lively and handsome and perfect they were. Her Papa told her so the one and only time she ever asked about her mother. At the time she had laughed at the silly mental image of cows in dresses, but as she grew older and read more novels she felt she understood what a warning it actually was.

Her relationship with Victor had gotten rather more intense over the past few months. She would slip her hand into his while they were alone and, when the weather was good, they would go out riding together in the rolling hills that surrounded the house and end up not doing not very much riding at all.

As with all things, it was all very innocent at first; Elizabeth liked to lie on her back and watch the clouds and Victor liked to lie beside her with a book. Sometimes he would comment on a particular passage or quote or she would tell him a story from her childhood years in Milan. He much preferred the outrageous stories and would roar with laughter at her antics, without bothering to ask her if any of it was exaggerated or plain fiction. She liked him for that.

He smiled a lot less when Gerhardt got taller, mostly she imagined because Gerhardt was fractionally taller than him. Gerhardt made a burly eleven year old, with wider shoulders than Victor and longer legs too. It had been a source of confusion to all visitors ever since, since Lord Frankenstein had started to insist on introducing Gerhardt first, proudly patting him on the shoulders as if he was the firstborn. Elizabeth had never had the honour since she was not truly family and only introduced as a side note but she knew that it hurt Victor's feelings most deeply.

One afternoon he was in a particularly foul mood and, while he kept turning the pages of the book in his hand, he did so at such an extraordinary speed that Elizabeth knew for a fact he could not possibly be reading. Every time she asked him a question, he responded with a sound rather than an actual word and in the end she got so frustrated with it all that she sat on his stomach and grabbed his book, throwing it across the hillside and out of sight. Victor glared up at her but made no attempt to escape.

"What was that for?" he asked and Elizabeth had leaned down to kiss him on the lips.

Elizabeth was hardly an expert on kisses and neither for that matter was Victor, so most of their early attempts were feverish, sloppy and more romantic in intent than execution. They bumped heads on innumerable occasions and once she completely misjudged her angle and head-butted Victor in the nose, giving him a nasty nosebleed that all but ruined his shirt. Still, they were learning from their mistakes.

Elizabeth had been so certain that Lady Frankenstein knew about the kissing, from the knowing way that she would ask about her day as she combed her hair. She would only excuse Elizabeth from tea parties and dress fittings if Victor was the one who asked for her and, when she asked Elizabeth what type of man she would like to marry when she was older, always mentioned Victor first as if she wanted her opinion of him the most.

Lady Frankenstein's expression was grave as she smoothed her skirts and stood up once again, taking Elizabeth's hand in hers.

"My Lord Husband expressed a wish for us to hold a ball before I go into confinement," she said, stroking her fingers across the creases in Elizabeth's palms. It should have soothed her, but it didn't. Elizabeth couldn't tear her eyes away from the sadness in the other woman's. "It is his most fervent hope that you will…find a suitor there to take your hand."

If she was truly honest with herself, Elizabeth had known that it was expected of her to marry, but that was not the part that troubled her. No. She would have been happy to marry if that was condition for spending her everlasting years out on the hillsides kissing Victor. She had been so certain that she would marry Victor that she had never given much thought to what might happen to her if it was not the case.

"I do not require a suitor!" she insisted. "I already have someone I love."

Her words only seemed to inflict a deeper sort of misery upon Lady Frankenstein, for she tightened her grip on Elizabeth's hand and placed soft kisses on the knuckles.

"Please forgive me," she said. "I know you love Victor and _Heaven knows_ it has brought joy to my soul, but your heart is young and you will love again."

"I will never love anyone as I love Victor and I think you know it well!"

Lady Frankenstein was weeping. Elizabeth could feel the hot tears against her skin and drew her hand away in repulsion. For a moment Lady Frankenstein stared at the void before reaching out to cup Elizabeth's face, the same way she had always done whenever she was ill or incapable of sleeping. It had bewildered Elizabeth to begin with and soothed her later on but at that moment, surrounded by pretty dresses and maids that stared, the thought of making any sort of contact disgusted her and she flinched away from every touch.

"Forgive me," said Lady Frankenstein. "But it is what you were born for."

"You do not have the right to determine the circumstances of my birth," snarled Elizabeth as she backed into the door and scrambled for the doorknob. "You are not my Mother. And I shall _never_ forgive you."

Elizabeth would always remember the way Lady Frankenstein sank to the floor and sobbed as she stormed out of the door, calling her name and begging for forgiveness until the words slurred together and became something quite inaudible. Elizabeth was utterly absorbed by escaping that room and the girl inside that she refused to believe was her or what she had been born to be but, even so, she could not completely block out the sound.

In the years that followed there was one person she never forgave for the conversation that transpired in that little room but it was not Lady Frankenstein.

* * *

Archie didn't know much about Melody Sands. In fact, the only reason he even knew her first name was because the time he took the dogs for a walk coincided with the time she went jogging. However, that's not to say he couldn't tell she was nervous. She'd barely touched the coffee he offered and seemed really quite distant.

"Don't mind me saying this," he said. "But…are you okay? What's on your mind?"

Melody blinked, glanced from him to Pongo sitting next to her, to the filing cabinets and bookshelves and the coffee cup in front of her as if realising where she was for the first time. She rubbed her temples, suddenly looking very embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, Archie," she said. "I just haven't been sleeping much lately. Hoping that you could help me out with that, actually."

She reached into her purse and pulled out a leather-bound notebook. She passed it to him and he automatically began to flick through the pages, raising his eyebrows at some of the designs.

"These…" he said, before turning the page and taking a deep breath. "Where did you find these?"

"The notebook belongs to one of our interns. I noticed him jotting down these pictures on his breaks, didn't think too much of it, but when I saw them…" Melody took a deep breath as if reliving the experience. "I'm worried, Archie. I don't know what to think."

Archie bit his lip and turned to some of the later sketches. Some were dated as recently as that morning, with the latest being the initial outline of what appeared to be a stable.

"Interesting…" he said, turning to the previous page and examining the close up of what appeared to be one woman cradling another in her arms. The drawing was unfinished, for neither woman had a face, but it was clear from the pose that the cradled woman was at the very least unconscious. Archie closed the notebook before pushing his glasses further up his nose.

"It's certainly true that drawings can be used to demonstrate a person's mental state during childhood, but it's a lot more complicated in adults," he said. "I mean, you say this kid is an intern. Do you know very much about him? The kid could draw comic books in his spare time or simply enjoy old movies."

Melody's expression was hopeful, borderline pleading.

"So there's a chance they don't mean anything?"

Archie leaned back in his chair, searching for the right words.

"I think that it's unlikely he has a dangerous psychosis, especially since he would have been given a full evaluation before being cleared to treat patients," he said, closing the notebook and resting it on his coffee table. "However, if it helps you sleep easy, I'd be happy to take a closer look at this in my spare time."

The offer seemed to take Melody off guard. It was written all over her face.

"You-You would do that?" she asked and Archie couldn't help but laugh.

"Of course," he said. "But, like I said, it's unlikely anything interesting will show up."

Melody was a lot less nervous as she put on her coat and scarf and thanked him over and over again for his help. As a sign of her gratitude, she invited him over to her apartment for dinner later on that week, with the warning that the food could turn out to be pizza delivery. He accepted the invitation, joking that his favourite topping was Hawaiian.

When she had been gone for a good ten minutes, he poured himself a stiff drink and picked up the notebook again. He had only pretended to believe her lie about the intern. Truth be told that while he had never seen the notebook before he had seen something remarkably like it: a single page, ripped from a book matching the exact specifications of the notebook in front of him, with a drawing of a woman on it. The woman had on the same Victoriana garb as many of the sketches in the notebook and was drawn in the same style, by the same hand. Even the date was written beside her in the same handwriting.

The worrying part was that that picture had been the property of a girl kept in one of the psychiatric cells that the Mayor liked to pretend didn't exist. He had had to sign confidentiality agreement after confidentiality agreement just to get inside and see her. Her files described her as volatile and dangerous but that was only the surface of the iceberg. No, the girl he visited in the cells suffered extreme paranoia and spent most of their sessions strapped to the bed, screaming at the ceiling in increasingly agitated Italian. One word was always louder than the rest: _mostro_.

He took a sip of his drink and tossed the notebook onto the fireplace, watching as the pages curled over and over in the heat until they were finally engulfed by the flames. The bindings took a good deal longer to burn and, as Archie examined the charred remains, he could not help but think to himself that it been a good quality book and its owner would miss it.

_Forgive me, Melody,_ he thought, setting up the fireguard. _But this is for your own good. _


	10. Chapter 10

Lord Alphonse Frankenstein never forgot the day he met Vincento Lavenza, largely because he decided upon first impression that he hated the man.

Alphonse Frankenstein was cursed with that title that made grown men quiver and wake in the middle of the night: _second son_. He was doomed to have slim pickings of whatever his brother did not want, marry the girl his brother did not choose and inherit whatever parts of the family fortune were left. He merely existed and that was all. Since he was not of any relative importance, it was rare that anyone made any effort to talk to him and at the then infamous dances held on their grounds he spent most of the evening sitting in the corner, watching as everybody else had a most splendid time.

The only thing Alphonse liked about the dances was a girl from a Viennese family by the name of Caroline who danced so gracefully that it was as if she was walking on water. Alphonse was bewitched by the very sight of her and longed to introduce himself, if anything just so he could have her attention for the moment. Unfortunately, every time he stood up to take her hand, some other young man had the same idea and Alphonse would find himself sitting back down to play the waiting game once again.

One day he came so incredibly close that he thought he must be dreaming. Not only did he manage to get to his feet relatively uninterrupted, but as he travelled across the dance floor he could not help but notice that nobody else had stepped forward to claim Caroline's hand.

_This must be the day,_ he dared to think, noticing that her friends had all gone for a glass of punch. _Today I dance with Caroline._

However, it was not to be. The second he was close enough to speak to her and had prepared the words he longed so much to say, someone else had already taken her hand and placed a kiss on the knuckles in such an outwardly teasing manner that Alphonse dared her to be offended. Instead she giggled and all Alphonse could do was stare in horror at the intruder.

It was the first time Alphonse Frankenstein ever looked upon Vincento Lavenza and he certainly made an impression. He was handsome, so handsome in fact that every woman in the room glanced at him when he walked past, including the ones that had been married for many years. Not only was he attractive, but he was clearly aware of it, for he flirted with any woman that so much as spoke to him and many others that did not. Caroline looked so happy dancing with him and all Alphonse could think was how much he _hated that man_.

Looking back, he understood that Vincento got that reaction from most men.

Lord Frankenstein had long looked forward to the day that he studied at Ingolstadt. He was less likely to inherit or be remembered as his brother was, which gave him a relative amount of freedom that his brother would never know. He could study far away and teach or fight in a foreign land and nobody would be terribly offended by it, since he was only the second son and it was not his lot in life to inherit a title.

There was only one man in his class that he recognised and, when he saw who it was, Alphonse tried to make himself as small and unremarkable as possible by hiding behind his books but to no avail. Before long someone was calling his name in a booming Italian voice and sitting beside him, asking after his health and saying how glad he was to see him again. Alphonse returned the sentiment out of politeness and little else.

Vincento was laid back and easy with his affections, lazily promising lands and stately homes to their Professors in exchange for a favour or two; exactly the sort of man that the Lord Frankenstein's own Father had warned him to avoid. It was difficult to believe that that man was to become his closest friend in the world and perhaps in retrospect more of a brother than his true brother had ever been.

Many people were happy to believe that Vincento's easy-going nature signified laziness and the way he could convince even the shyest of young ladies to dance with him was surely a sign that he had spent more than one evening at a whorehouse. Rumours flew around Ingolstadt of women in bright silks leaving the dormitories at early hours of the morning and opium parties that went on for most of the night, the existence of which Alphonse could not confirm or deny, though he could say one thing for certain. Vincento Lavenza often disappeared from classes for days at a time, returning drunk out of his wits and settling down to sleep in class.

Vincento was in love with a woman that would not have him, a beauty by the name of Vittoria who was deeply religious and so loved God that she planned to forsake her family fortune and take the holy orders to live a pure and simple life. Alphonse was never entirely sure if Vincento was as disgusted as he let on by the mental image of his Vittoria dressed as a nun, but the man would tell anyone who listened that Vittoria taking the holy vows was surely a crime against God and not proof of her devotion, considering He was the one who had made her so beautiful. Whenever Vincento disappeared from Ingolstadt everyone presumed that he had gone to proclaim his love to Vittoria again, since Heaven knew it was the only time he stopped talking about her.

As it turned out, Vincento was not nearly as prone to idiocy as he let on, but in possession of a shrewd, calculating mind that could identify a truth from a lie from several miles away. He pretended to be laid back and nonchalant, when in fact he had an incredibly passionate temperament that in his home town of Milan was often the source of great inconvenience, for he was quite incapable of turning away from a fight. It was a testament to the man's genius that while their Ingolstadt classmates joked at his expense and circulated insulting cartoons that identified him as some sort of mock knight on a work horse, crying to the gods for his darling Dulcinea, not one of them ever realised what he was truly up to.

Nobody talked about Transylvania. It was one of those topics that nobody dared to bring up in polite company. Transylvania was ruled by the Grand Count Dracula, the closest thing to a Prince that they had in those parts. Dracula had been in control of Transylvania for as long as the history books documented and it was well known that he ruled with an iron fist, though nobody questioned why, especially not after the Great War that had left many of the surrounding countries in tatters. The reason for the Great War was largely forgotten, though every history book in existence documented at length the terrible plague that broke out of Transylvania once fighting began. Soldiers, leaders and nobles would be taken to their beds feeling faint and over the course of a few days they would decline despite the best efforts of medics. Their death was slow, drawn out, as if life itself had been extracted from them.

A strange madness took over the world during the Great War and everyone was vulnerable. Noble women disappeared from their beds, churches burned to the ground and the only place that had ever been safe was Geneva. Geneva had always been neutral and relatively unaffected by fighting. However, Alphonse feared that that could not be the case for much longer.

Vincento never told Alphonse the reason for his interest in Dracula, nor why he was only too happy to join (and eventually lead) the reformed Rebel Alliance, a shady group that met in secret and shared information in whorehouses around Ingolstadt. He was dead set on the fact that there had been some grand cover-up during the Great War and hounded any possible opportunity for evidence. All Alphonse knew was that at the time he had believed his friend to be the subject of severe lunacy, ego or a mixture of both and every time Vincento returned to classes to sleep he was unashamed to breathe a sigh of relief. Alphonse often warned him that while proof was thin on the ground everybody knew that Dracula was dangerous and if he was not careful he would lose everything he held dear.

He remembered the way the medics had looked at him as he arrived in Vincento's bedchamber to see the body. Truth be told, he had already guessed at the cause of death and he was proved quite correct. Vincento's body was sickly looking but the doctors said he had been perfectly well only a week before and had taken to bed, only to waste away. It was all a mystery to them, but not to Alphonse, especially not when the Nanny passed him a letter that Vincento had written in his final few moments. The letter was intended for Elizabeth and was only to be handed to her when she turned sixteen, for it detailed everything that had happened to her parents, dangerous knowledge for a girl as young as Elizabeth had been back then. Among the other possessions he left to Elizabeth, Vincento left his sword and Alphonse could not help but wonder what fate he had intended for his one and only child.

Alphonse had burned the letter as soon as he returned to Geneva in fear of what it contained. He knew from experience that Lavenzas had fire in their blood and, if left unchecked, it was only a matter of time before Elizabeth's own passion and anger burned her alive. At the time he had a young family of his own and wanted nothing more than to maintain the neutrality that had kept him safe throughout childhood and he hoped would protect them too. His brother had died many years beforehand, leaving him in charge of the lands and he had sworn to protect them from any threat.

He ignored the letters from Vincento's leaderless rebel groups at first, casting them into the fire as soon as they arrived. He told himself that he didn't feel bad about it, that he was looking out for his family and any good man would do the same. Even so, he was incapable of looking at Elizabeth and sometimes even went so far as wishing he had never brought her back with him. He would watch her playing outside with Gerhardt, unaware of what her parents had died for or what sort of people they had actually been. Elizabeth had no idea that her father was heralded as a hero across most of Europe and his death had sparked outrage in many noble circles.

Indeed, Alphonse could not ignore the letters when they started to arrive from well-known noble families who had supported his own for centuries. He knew that Geneva would not be able to stay neutral for very much longer, for there was far more to lose than to gain. Vincento was not the only prevalent Rebel leader to die and every day he received a new letter informing him of another village or family that had wasted away from the same mysterious sickness that had destroyed Vincento – all of them villages or men that had been champions of Vincento's cause or spoken out against Dracula in secret. The other noble families were gathering armies to march on Transylvania and Alphonse had no choice but join them or end up stranded in the crossfire. He could not avoid Vincento's ghost any longer.

Well, for much longer anyhow. There was still one more thing that had to be done that did not sit as well with him as he would have liked but was absolutely necessary in the grand scheme of things. Geneva had remained in a state of neutrality for so long that most of its weaponry and armies were outdated or useless. More than anything they required an allegiance with a bigger country with better resources to aid them in their plight and the best way to acquire one of those, of course, was with a wedding. Elizabeth didn't know that her status as the living child of Vincento meant she was worth her weight in gold and the rebels would fight among themselves over who got the honour of marrying her, nor did she know the exact wording of her father's will with regards to her marriage.

Vincento had known he was going to die. He had also written a will, leaving all of the Lavenza fortune to Elizabeth with the clause that she could do 'whatsoever she desired' with it, so long as she and her guardian (that being Alphonse himself) came to an agreement on her suitor. Elizabeth was not to marry anyone she did not wish to, but neither could she marry anyone without Alphonse's approval. Elizabeth's lack of knowledge with regards to that information proved quite advantageous. Few noble women in her position would have been given the freedom to decline potential suitors, and most of the families he had approached had presumed that she had never received it.

Caroline wept for hours after he told her of his plan, begging him to reconsider. She had always longed for a daughter and came to think of Elizabeth as her own, practicing the Italian lullaby Elizabeth had taught her over and over before bed. She insisted that she had to get the pronunciation just right otherwise the poor little thing would never be comforted by her words. What's more, when she began to suspect that Victor and Elizabeth were getting rather fond of one another, she had taken his hand in hers and told him with utmost delight. After all, if they married then in a sense Elizabeth _was_ her daughter and Caroline could think of nothing better. In different circumstances Alphonse would have welcomed the news.

Elizabeth's reaction to the news was predictable. She came knocking at his study door and, when he did not answer straight away, let herself in without a care for propriety. He looked up from his reading and immediately wished he hadn't, for it wasn't just Elizabeth that had walked into the room. She had clearly been in the middle of a dress fitting when Caroline told her, for she was wearing a deep blue affair that accentuated how lovely she had become in such a short period of time. He had seen a dress just like that before, worn by Vittoria the first time he met her. What's more, she was furious and he recognised that too from the rare occasions he had ever seen Vincento truly lose his temper.

"How can you just sit there?" she shouted at him in her native tongue. "You have kept all of this from me and for what? You know I am in love, you know I am happy here. Why would you take all of this from me if not to make me unhappy?"

He could not say a word. He was too fixated on the ghost in front of him.

"I was not born for this. I was born for _anything_ but this."

Looking back, he found it somewhat ironic that while she wailed so, Vincento's sword was mounted on the wall behind her.

* * *

Gerhardt dined alone that evening.

He knew from listening to the maids that Elizabeth had argued with either Mother or Father, though they couldn't seem to settle on who, so he assumed she was probably outside sulking while they were elsewhere in the house deciding on her punishment. He doubted there would be one, for Elizabeth was rarely punished for anything. Whenever she did anything particularly terrible, Mother was too soft to do anything besides scold her and Father could barely even look at her. The closest Elizabeth ever came to a proper punishment was being told she couldn't see Victor and everyone knew that they met regardless of whether they were permitted to or not.

As for Victor, he had been studying the names and banners of various noble houses for most of the day at Father's behest and Gerhardt had barely seen him to talk to. Even so, Gerhardt doubted he would have very much to talk about besides Elizabeth or whatever other book he had been reading and that was hardly the sort of conversation that he sought out unless desperate.

Time had changed Gerhardt; he was no longer the chubby little boy who settled for playing at soldiers. He wanted to _be_ in the midst of battle and smell the cannon fire for real, standing out as the ultimate force of justice and earning the love of all who met him. He wanted maidens to kiss him on the cheek and thank him for his trouble before he rode off into the sunset on his steed, just like the heroes did in every book of adventure he had read.

He supposed he should have been rather more grateful for Elizabeth, for without her things would have been incredibly dull indeed. On days when Victor was otherwise engaged with tasks from Father, Elizabeth would skulk around the house and lands quite bored and it was not difficult to persuade her to go out riding with him. Gerhardt lived for those moments. Of course he enjoyed riding out with Victor and Father too, speaking to villagers and learning their family names and lineages, but it was all so boring by comparison. When he rode out with Elizabeth he could pretend she was his lady love and the villagers tipped their hats to him because he had saved them all from a terrible fate.

He would take the reins of Elizabeth's filly, Rosinante, once he was certain she was safely on the ground and enquire after the health of whatever villagers they bumped into on their travels. Before long he knew the names and faces of the families by heart and received a warm welcome whenever he ventured there. Farmers would barge their way through the crowds to give him and Elizabeth a taste of whatever vegetables or cheeses they had, while older women would offer to read Elizabeth's palms, claiming they could tell her how many babies she would have or the name of her husband to be. She only ever took them up on the offer once, blushing madly and disappearing into a side room with one of the crones. She reappeared a few minutes later laughing so hard that Gerhardt had worried that she would explode.

"What on earth happened in there?" he asked when the pair of them were seated underneath a pear tree and Elizabeth had finally stopped laughing.

"I asked them for the name of the man I would marry," Elizabeth had said, before sinking her teeth into the flesh of a ripe fruit, the juice dribbling down her chin. "Anyway, that mad old bat got it all wrong…she said I'd marry you."

Gerhardt had laughed, though on the inside he didn't find it funny at all. He had imagined Elizabeth in place of the fair maiden in every adventure novel without truly realising he was doing so, imagined Elizabeth's voice whenever he read the maiden's lines. His affection for her was deeply flawed, for no matter how much he adored her laugh or longed to make her smile, she would never care for him half so much as she did his brother.

Gerhardt liked to pretend that when she talked about her feelings for Victor she was really just masking her feelings for him, though that was not always possible. If ever Victor was able to leave his classes early or abandoned them at the last second Elizabeth was completely incapable of masking her delight. She would run into his arms and plant kisses on his cheeks as if he was the true hero of the situation and forget whatever conversation she had been having previously. When they were alone Gerhardt could talk to her about almost anything and she would respond warmly, laughing at his jokes but not his dreams. When Victor was around he absorbed all of her attention.

The three of them were riding around the grounds once when Elizabeth's hat was lifted by the autumnal breeze and swept into the trees many miles beneath them.

"Oh no!" Elizabeth had cried out, shielding her hair from the wind. She usually didn't care about how she looked, but Mother had insisted she have new riding clothes since her old ones were completely tatty and wearing apart at the seams. That was the first day she had ever worn them outside.

"It doesn't matter," Victor had replied, stretching out a hand and taking hers so that her hair flew free. Victor loved her hair the best of all. Whenever Elizabeth leaned her head on his lap it took only a matter of seconds for him to stroke his fingers through it. Even then, as the wind whipped through it and it escaped its bindings, Gerhardt knew that Victor would have it no other way. Elizabeth seemed to know that too, for she gazed into his eyes with a look of utmost devotion and stroked her fingers over his.

"I'll fetch it!" Gerhardt had said, wanting nothing more than for her to look at him that way.

He was not sure how long it took him to find the hat in the end, only that he kept telling himself he would place it in Elizabeth's hands and she would look at him the same way she looked at Victor. He did not expect a kiss from her or for her to tell her how uncommonly _grateful _she was or even for her to thank him. No, for Gerhardt that happy, fond look in her eyes was enough for him.

He rode back up the hillside so quickly that it took him a few seconds to remember where he had left Victor and Elizabeth, finally finding them in a flower bed. Elizabeth had rested her head on Victor's shoulder and Victor entertained himself by slipping daisies into her hair. Elizabeth whispered something in Victor's ear that he seemed to find greatly amusing and, seeming not to notice that someone was approaching, he stole a kiss directly from her lips. Gerhardt never knew for certain if they noticed the hat fall to the floor, since he dropped it and rode off without looking back.

The first snows of winter had arrived since then and Elizabeth's footprints were easy enough to follow, leading up to the family well that even then was still half frozen and covered with a thick layer of ice. Climbing the steps to the top was perilous and more than one servant had broken limbs after attempting to fetch water from it, yet Elizabeth sat at the top, peering over the edge and throwing stones. Gerhardt could not see her face at first, for she was wearing a cloak that shadowed most of her features and left only the mist of her breath visible.

"Elizabeth," he said, climbing each step with utmost care. "You did not come to dinner."

She threw one last stone over the edge and waited until it clattered against the ice at the bottom before turning to look at him. Her eyes shone with tears and Gerhardt sat down beside her, reaching into his pocket. He had a healthy appetite, a fact that Mother often commented on proudly, yet he had still wrapped up a few grapes and some cheese in a napkin for her.

"Here," he said, placing the napkin on the stone. "You should eat."

At first Elizabeth stared at the collection of food as if unsure of what to do, before finally taking a grape.

"They mean to marry me off, Gerhardt," she said, rolling it over and over in the palm of her hand. "Send me away with some man I've never met."

If Gerhardt had not already been sitting outside in the cold surrounded by ice then he would almost certainly have felt like he'd swallowed some. He could not imagine Geneva without Elizabeth. He could imagine leaving himself to travel on some adventure or to fight for the right of justice in the world, but only on the condition that Elizabeth was there to welcome him home when he returned.

Gerhardt searched for the right words to say – the words that were expected of him as a son of the House of Frankenstein. More than anything he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her how much he adored her, how he would speak to Father and make everything right just like every hero in the books he read, though he feared that such a thing was beyond him.

"I am sure that Mother and Father only want what is best for you," he said, wishing he could believe his own words.

Elizabeth stared at him.

"Best for me?!" She said. "To sell my soul in exchange for pretty dresses and a life I hate? To marry and birth babes and forget I was ever anybody else? You think that is better for me than my own happiness?"

Gerhardt wanted to tell her that her happiness was all he wanted too, that he would settle for watching her marry Victor if that was what it took, but the words froze on his lips. He knew he could never say that to her, especially if Father had already chosen otherwise. He was not Victor, not the eldest son, not anyone of great distinction. There was nothing he could say or do that would make anyone stand up and listen, so instead he settled for saying what was expected of him.

"Mother and Father have taken care of you for all of these years. You should honour their wishes in repayment."

He could not hide the sadness from his voice, nor could Elizabeth hide the rage from hers. She jumped down from the well and onto the stone steps with a complete disregard for whether or not she would slip and fall and gathered her cloak around her body.

"You say that as if I have ever had some choice in the matter," she snarled, turning and storming off towards the forests. Gerhardt made to follow, though admittedly with a lot more care.

"Elizabeth!" He called back. "Elizabeth! It's not safe in the woods at-"

She disappeared into the shadows and moments later a booming gunshot echoed through the trees, followed swiftly by a second.


	11. Chapter 11

Archie had been more than helpful, Melody could not deny that. She returned to the office with buckets of time to spare and set about making herself a cup of honeyed tea. She should have felt at ease with the situation at hand, better with the knowledge that she was probably overreacting about Whale, but for some reason she still couldn't relax.

The cup of tea did nothing for her, nor did the brisk walk to the records office.

She had to take a deep breath when she used Whale's I.D. card to get inside and searched the room for the files on individual staff members. She had never been much good at picking locks with hair grips and it took her about three attempts; even then she didn't so much as breathe a sigh of relief when the drawer finally clicked open.

Her heart flat out raced when she pulled out Dr Whale's file, but that swiftly turned to disappointment when she saw that instead of papers there was a single card, noting that the relevant files had been moved.

Any chance Melody had of relaxing and letting everything go was gone in that instant, for Whale's papers had not simply been transferred to a department within the hospital. They had been transferred to the Mayor's office and signed for by one Regina Mills.


	12. Chapter 12

Doctor Whale's apartment wasn't far from the hospital, a decision made out of practicality more than anything else. Apparently he wasn't the only one to think so, since the vast majority of people living in the building worked at the hospital in some fashion. Whale usually got the same reaction from the women he took back there, no matter how they went about it. From the shy girls who made a point of saying they didn't usually go home with strange men to the feistier ones who loosened his tie even as they stepped through the front door. All of them, though the words varied from woman to woman, made the same observation: 'Nice place you've got here' or 'I like what you've done with the place' or simply 'nice place'.

All of them felt the need to praise him in some way, when in truth it wasn't entirely necessary. Quite the opposite in fact. Whale knew his apartment was far from a masterwork of modern décor and never would be, considering he was rarely there. He had never taken the time to go out and buy fancy vases for his coffee table or a top of the range TV. To an outsider he was sure that his apartment must have looked like a show home and not a very good one.

The simplicity of his apartment was, once again, a by-product of practicality rather than choice. He would have loved nothing more than an enormous manor house complete with gargoyles, French Maid and sex dungeon, but he had neither the time nor the money for it. His apartment was relatively low maintenance and the rent was cheap, so he counted his blessings. There was also the fact that the neutrality of the place came in quite handy whenever he brought dates home with him. Every girl would say 'nice place' but it had a different meaning each time, ranging from 'thank God the rumours about the sex swing aren't true' to 'guess we'll have to spice things up a little'.

The only luxury he had afforded himself was a record player and collection of vinyl records. Initially he had wanted a CD player and some classical music to help him sleep, for he was quite prone to insomnia, but ended up walking away from a garage sale with the record player and boxful of vinyls that the original owner no longer had a use for. He had hardly heard of any of the artists at the time and some of the records skipped at times but for the measly few dollars he paid he was hardly about to complain.

Whale's insomnia had dogged him for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he would go into the hospital even when he wasn't on call and intercept any emergencies as they arrived. The adrenaline rush was addictive and so was the look on everyone's faces when they saw him arriving on the scene, dragging on his white coat. Emergencies in Storybrooke weren't exactly forthcoming, though, so most evenings he had to settle for exhausting himself in other ways and he had to admit that there was something quite soothing about listening to the steady breathing of whatever woman slept beside him.

He brought home a variety of women; some of them were cuddlers, others weren't. Whale didn't particularly care either way. Their presence in his bed was all he wanted. Whenever he attempted to sleep alone he failed miserably, but the strange part was that when somebody slept beside him he could shut his eyes and fall asleep within seconds. It felt so _natural_, as if he had known the reason why but forgotten.

On occasions where he wasn't successful and returned to his apartment alone he would put on a record or two and sketch for a while in his notebook. It wasn't as effective as having someone sleeping next to him, but he usually managed to doze off for a couple of hours, so it wasn't entirely pointless.

It was on one such evening that he first realised his notebook was missing.

He had been in and out of the office all day tending to an elderly patient that refused to stay in bed and spent most of the day wandering round the wards, while Melody hadn't been in much of a mood to talk to him when she returned from her lunch break, which pretty much ended any chance of her coming over. _The Cat's Eye_ had been practically deserted and Granny's was even quieter. Whale had ordered a bagel and left.

When he got home, he poured himself a drink and put on the record that he assumed was the original owner's favourite since it was one of the most damaged. It skipped every other word and sometimes entire sentences but despite that Whale couldn't bring himself to throw it out or stop playing it. He sipped his brandy over muddled guitar riffs and song lyrics that made about as much sense as a badly translated crossword clue, all while slipping his hand into his pocket and reaching for his notebook.

When he realised that it wasn't there, his first instinct was to check and double check every coat he owned, followed swiftly by a return trip to the hospital. It wasn't there either and Whale pulled out his cell phone, scrolling through his contact list for Melody's number. He stopped right there, however, before even pressing 'dial'. To the best of his knowledge Melody didn't even know about the notebook and considering she hadn't seemed in the mood for his company he could only presume that she had argued with her boyfriend again. It would hardly be prudent of him to call her under such circumstances.

Whale's apartment was minimalistic, with few luxuries and he had always believed that it was because of practicality and nothing more. However, as he poured himself another drink and stared at the ceiling he could not help but find himself wondering if that was true or if they were really just gone from under his nose as well.

The deepest thoughts came from the bottom of the shallowest glasses.

* * *

Lord and Lady Frankenstein came to no conclusions about Elizabeth. In the end Caroline sat in a comfy chair by the window while her husband stood by the fire, allowing the crackling of the flames to speak for both of them. There had been nothing but silence between them for far too long, she knew, a silence that lived and breathed as they did.

She was not entirely certain when the silence had taken on a life of its own, only that she knew Vincento's death was not the root of everything as so many of her friends told her in their letters. Everyone believed that the death of 'that crude Lavenza' had driven her Lord husband quite mad and his behaviour was the result of some sickness. Caroline knew better, for there were a lot of things that she omitted in her own letters.

When Victor was born, she wept with happiness – overwhelmed with love for the tiny baby that was hers to protect. Victor had been so perfect in every way and she refused help from all of the Nannies brought in to aid her, shielding him from them and telling them over and over that 'he is my child. I will take care of him'. They all disapproved, she knew, but she cared little. Victor was her son and hers alone and Alphonse found her miniature rebellion somewhat amusing, helped along no doubt by Vincento, who was rather more open-minded about such things.

Caroline never mentioned it to her Lord Husband, as she knew it was still salt to the wounds, but she had been very fond of that idiotic Italian. He was not the same as any other gentleman she had met and seemingly devoid of that filter that made nobility so frustrating. Vincento acted on his passions without much of a care for the consequences, yet did it so charmingly that it was difficult to object. After she married Alphonse he wrote her letters, asking for her advice with regards to his romancing of Vittoria de Cortes without a care for the fact that it was highly improper for an unmarried man to write private letters to a married woman that was not a relative. She joked about it once in one of her replies, only for Vincento to slip a paragraph into a letter to her husband, sending her kisses. He was the classic example of a terribly naughty boy in a grown man's body, getting scolded for one thing and doing something far worse in response.

Victor was still a nameless babe when Vincento and Vittoria visited Geneva to announce their upcoming wedding and to pass on invitations in person. Caroline had imagined a brash, outspoken person that matched Vincento perfectly, but Vittoria was quite the opposite. She was shy and delicate and did not stray from Vincento's side until the men retired to the smoking room for drinks. Caroline could not help but wonder how she had attracted a man as loud as Vincento, though she could see the proof right there in front of her. He admired her when she was not looking and, when she was, spoke in the soft tones of a lover.

The very thought that Vincento could cause silence was incredibly amusing, considering the man was as loud as a lion and as hairy as one too. Caroline had laughed as Vincento bounced Victor in his arms until the boy was sick, a sequence of events that made him roar with laughter rather than be offended as most other men would be. Her biggest regret was that she was never able to tell him that his friendship meant so much to her that she named the most precious thing she had in honour of the love of his life. Fool that she was, she had worried that he might have been embarrassed by the gesture.

No, the silence was not so all consuming back then and the house was so much brighter when filled with the warmth of a new child. Caroline watched in awe as her little boy grew bigger and stronger, laughing at the way he babbled and attempting to reply. Fatherhood had a strange effect on Alphonse too and, though it was not as easy to spot, she could tell it was there. When she married him Alphonse had been the younger son of proud nobility, with an older brother that had been groomed to run the estate from an early age. When that brother succumbed to typhus, all control and the responsibilities that came as a result fell to Alphonse, who had never been taught to deal with such problems. The first year or so of their marriage consisted of Alphonse complaining about one obligation or another, but one look at Victor and suddenly that changed. All of a sudden his primary concern was legacy.

Caroline had no legacy, for she had no female child, a fact reinforced when news arrived from Italy of the birth of Vincento's child. It should have been a joyful announcement, but the words were ones of sorrow. Vincento did not specify the details, instead stating only the hard facts. A child had been born – a girl to bear the Lavenza name – and on the same night his Lady Wife had passed away. Caroline could not tear her thoughts away from that motherless girl. She loved Victor more than she had ever thought it was possible to love another human being, ready to lay aside her life for his in a heartbeat, but that did not change the fact that they would never have the connection she could have with a daughter. Caroline longed for a little girl she could sing to and pick out beautiful dresses for, a daughter she could escort to dances and teach to curtsey. Oh, how she wanted that.

Just like that, the silence began to creep in. Vincento no longer wrote letters to her and only scribbled notes to Alphonse every so often, notes that sent Alphonse to the fireplace, rubbing his temples. He never commented on the contents of the letters, instead burning them by the fire and saying what a fool Vincento was. If ever Caroline asked if he had mentioned the child, he would sigh and say 'no, he did not'.

When she discovered she was with child a second time she saw it as a sign. Within her belly was the daughter she had always wanted; the little girl with golden curls and pale eyes that sat beside her in her dreams. She did not believe she had ever been so happy before and took the time to enjoy her pregnancy, rather than being overpowered by nerves as she had been the first time round. Perhaps, in hindsight, that was a mistake. The birth was harder the second time, not easier as she was told while in confinement and she lost so much blood that the first midwife fainted at the sight. The second midwife was far more direct.

"One of you is going to die," she said, dabbing at her forehead with a damp cloth. Caroline had been too exhausted to cry or even protest.

In the end nobody died. Her child was born fit and healthy, though the midwife warned that it was unlikely she would bear another living child. Caroline did not care much about that for she believed she had what she wanted and instead begged to hold her daughter. The nursemaids looked at one another before staring back at her and that was when she realised.

She had not birthed a daughter at all but a son.

Gerhardt was welcomed into the world by the sounds of her screams that she did not want him, would never want him and all she wanted was her daughter. She refused to so much as hold him for many months and wet nurses were brought in to ensure he survived. It was only when she stopped sobbing that Caroline noticed the quiet that had surrounded everything, the hushed way that everybody spoke while in her presence, the way that Victor brought her flowers from the gardens but did not say a word to her as if frightened that she might explode and claim she did not want him either. Gerhardt's first word was 'Mama' and Caroline swore that it was the closest she had ever come to a broken heart. She loved him with all of her being, yet whenever she looked at him all she could see was that beautiful little girl she would never hold in her arms.

She felt so much, thought so much and knew she could not say any of it to her husband, so settled for saying nothing instead. She broke her silence when it was necessary, though rarely on other occasions. She supposed that the maidservants and what had once been her closest friends must have deemed her quite cold, for she did not confide in them either, instead shrugging off their concerns as idle chatter or making it quite clear that she had no interest in letting them know what was on her mind.

How could she tell any of them that she resented her own son? She could only imagine their reactions if she told them that she hated a dead woman as well.

She had only met Vittoria once and found her quite amicable. She was too shy to be irritating and what few words she did say were well thought out. Hating her was difficult but ultimately necessary. Vittoria had never held Elizabeth's hand or kissed her forehead to soothe bad dreams away, yet would always be considered her Mother, whereas Caroline's own actions towards the child accounted for nothing. It mattered little that she cared very deeply for the girl, since she was considered an obligation and nothing more. Every moment she spent with Elizabeth, Caroline wondered if she was losing her mind. She loathed Vittoria for leaving such a beautiful child behind, loathed herself for willing Elizabeth to call her 'Mama' and then loathed Vittoria once again when she did not.

Moonlight shone through the window and Caroline could see that there was snow outside. She smiled and stroked a hand across her belly, praying to any God that would listen that the child inside would be a daughter she would not fail, that would not say she hated her.

Caroline was leaning her head to doze against the window when she heard the first BOOM of a shotgun. It was not such a strange sound for the season and Alphonse barely even reacted but it woke Caroline with a start. She rubbed her eyes irritably and considered retiring for the night, when a second shot rang out, followed by cries of 'ELIZABETH!'. The voice was Gerhardt's.

Lady Frankenstein did not bother to shatter the silence on her way out of the room or fix her hair so that she looked somewhat more presentable. She did not respond as Alphonse called after her or even shudder as she ran out of the house and the cold air hit her bare shoulders. Many hours later she realised that she had not put on a wrap.

All she understood at that moment was that she had a duty to protect her child, even if she wasn't entirely sure which of the pair that was.

* * *

"ELIZABETH!" Gerhardt called, tearing through snow covered branches. He had heard the shot as clearly as if she had been standing in front of him, but surely he was mistaken about its origin. Surely Elizabeth was not…

He felt a lot colder just thinking about it.

He knew that the groundskeeper lived in a cottage on the premises not far from there and was permitted to use his shotgun if he deemed such circumstances necessary, such as a wolf on the loose or poachers acting illegally. Perhaps the man had been a decent shot once, but years on the job and servitude on the front line of a war many years beforehand had rendered the man wildly paranoid and half blind. One of Elizabeth's favourite pranks was to cover herself in flour around Halloween and dance around the cottage, pretending to be a ghost. The groundskeeper was terrified of ghosts and would barricade himself in the cottage, a result that gave Elizabeth the giggles for many days afterwards.

"Stupid Van Helsing," she would say between laughs.

Gerhardt couldn't help but think that she would not be so quick to label the groundskeeper stupid with her dying breath.

"ELIZABETH!" He called again, cursing when she did not answer. "ELIZABETH!"

If she died then he wasn't a hero. What kind of hero allowed a fair maiden to be slaughtered in the forest?

He stopped, took a deep breath and shuddered as the cold wind hit his chest.

"ELIZABEEEEEEEEEEEEETH!" He yelled from the top of his lungs, listening to the way his words bounced off every tree and disturbed a few pheasants, causing them to flap their wings in terror and scurry off through the undergrowth.

Gerhardt rubbed his hands together and took a guess at his location. The forest was wide and expansive, but it did not stretch on forever. He had spent much of his childhood exploring it with Elizabeth and an increasingly disapproving Victor, hiding in the bracken and learning the hard way which bushes would bring him out in a rash and although the snowy state of affairs was somewhat disorientating he was still able to hazard a guess at whereabouts he was. He knew that if he wandered a few more paces to the east then he would eventually come across the stream that ran through the forest and past the groundskeeper's cottage. Part of him quaked at the thought of running through the woods and into the unknown but he bit his bottom lip and began to sprint.

"ELIZABETH!" He kept calling. "ELIZABETH, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Why did everything have to be so dark and quiet? He rubbed snow out of his eyes and carried on running, hoping that he found her alive and well, that she would laugh at the sight of him and say how silly he was for following her. She could even slap him around the face if she wanted and say that she hated him, anything so long as she was alive.

The stream had frozen over in the past few days, but it wasn't too difficult to follow it. The closer he got to the groundskeeper's cottage, the more convinced he became that he could see the faint glow of a fire and muffled voices in the distance.

"Ye should get gone, girl! How many times must I tell ye-"

"Tell me what, exactly? That murder is perfectly justified?"

"Ye didn't see them _before_!"

Gerhardt tore round the corner and out into the clearing in front of the groundskeeper's cottage. When he saw what was happening there, his jaw dropped.

Groundskeeper Van Helsing was dressed as if for bed and, if it was possible, looked even crazier than usual. His eyes were wide – determined – and he gripped his shotgun tightly, aiming the barrel at Elizabeth. She stood directly in front of him, so calm that any outsider would have believed that she had not seen the gun in his hands.

"I will not leave until you let them go," said Elizabeth.

Only then did Gerhardt notice that she had tossed her fur lined cloak onto one of the snow drifts and stood out in the open, allowing stray snowflakes to drift onto her bare arms and neck.

"What on earth is going on?" He asked, stepping out into the open and flinching as the groundskeeper immediately redirected his gun.

Van Helsing laughed, a deep, croaky noise that Gerhardt had been frightened of when he was smaller. Almost everything about the man had. Van Helsing walked with a lumbering gait and had an enormous scar along one side of his face that nobody besides the groundskeeper himself knew the origin of. He rarely opened the eye on that side of his face, but when he did it usually caused onlookers to cower in fright and say their prayers, for it was a ghostly white. Truth be told, the man still unnerved him, but Gerhardt knew better than to show it. He clenched his fists and puffed out his chest in an attempt to look bigger; he was the hero after all and Van Helsing was a troll if ever there was one.

"If you've got any sense in that brain o'yers, young Lordling, ye'll turn back and head straight back the way ye came," said Van Helsing, then, pointing at Elizabeth with the barrel of his shotgun as if as an afterthought, "and take _that thing_ with ye. I'm starting to wonder if its bark really is worse than its bite."

Gerhardt could not help but notice that his hands were shaking and one of his legs was bleeding profusely. It was no ordinary graze or scratch that one became accustomed to when wandering through the forests; far more likely to have come as a result of teeth.

Just like that his head was filled with horrific scenes and he stared at Elizabeth in disbelief. She stared back at him quite coldly, which only made it worse.

"Elizabeth," he said, pointing to Van Helsing's bloodied leg. "Tell me you didn't!"

At first she did not seem to understand what he meant, for she looked quite confused, though that was quickly replaced by a look of pure indignation and he knew he had offended her.

"You think _I_ did that?!" She snapped. "Are you a complete idiot or only half of one?"

Her words stung and he fell silent, a silence that was only broken by the groundskeeper's cackles. Only then did Gerhardt realise that he had been quite incorrect to presume that Elizabeth had tossed her cloak aside onto one of the snow drifts. There was no snow drift there at all and whatever lay underneath the cloak was moving. He caught Elizabeth's gaze and stepped closer, stepping back and wretching into the bushes after seeing what was underneath.

Elizabeth had draped her cloak over the shoulders of a girl, naked as the Sabbath and weeping silently. The girl was a little older than he was, perhaps the same age as Victor, and had hold of a second girl in her arms. The state of the second girl was why she was weeping and also what made him so nauseous. The second girl was in a similar state of nakedness, though completely lifeless and cradled in the arms of the first. A gunshot wound to the forehead had killed her and her face could have been quite beautiful or terrible; it was impossible to tell either way, for it was covered in blood.

"He killed her, Gerhardt," said Elizabeth, "killed her in cold blood! He would have killed the other one too if I hadn't been here!"

Gerhardt had seen dead bodies before: the body of a fox strung up on a gibbet, a goat or two in the villages, but never a human. He had read about bodies of the fallen in all of the stories and from the descriptions he had always imagined them to look noble and as if they were sleeping. He could not even tell if the dead girl appeared to be sleeping since her face was so bloody.

"Why did you do this?" He asked and suddenly it was Van Helsing's turn to look offended.

"I've saved yer life and ye ask me why. Do ye Lordlings always bite the hand that feeds ye?" He barked, gripping his gun. "I was ready for sleepin' when I saw that one at the foot of my bed, naked as the day she was born and her teeth! I ain't never seen teeth like that on a human! I got out of bed and she latched onto me leg!"

Van Helsing paused for effect and grinned.

"She don't bite no more."

Gerhardt shuddered and the groundskeeper laughed.

"Soon as me gun went off this one," he indicated the weeping girl, "started calling, so I went outside to see what was happening. Didn't want to go to sleep knowing she was outside, eyeing me up like a piece o'beef! Anyway, I went outside and she was over there, climbing out of the stream, half girl, half fish, screaming for the other one."

At his words the living girl started to weep with far more desperation than before and, despite himself, Gerhardt found himself glancing down at the bottom of Elizabeth's cloak, both disappointed and relieved by the sight of the strange girl's stubby pink toes.

"She seems to have feet to me," he said.

"Well that's obvious, ent it? She grew legs to trick yous'all!"

The groundskeeper aimed his gun and Elizabeth quickly moved to shield the girl.

"You won't get any sense out of him," she said, as if the groundskeeper wasn't even there. "You'll have to do something."

Gerhardt squeezed his eyes shut and then did the one thing that came to him naturally.

"Mr Van Helsing, I command you to throw aside your gun at once!" He said, hoping he sounded braver than he felt. Van Helsing's face creased into one enormous, ugly grin and he tossed his shotgun into the snow without a word of protest, only to draw a knife from his pocket and lunge at the girl.

It all happened so quickly. The girl screamed and so did Elizabeth. Van Helsing lifted his arm, ready to slice the strange girl's throat and Gerhardt knew that he had to do something, yet there he was, frozen to the spot. He could not even open his mouth to speak, let alone step forward to protect the damsel in distress. In the end it was Elizabeth that leaped forward and grabbed hold of Van Helsing's wrist, a matter of seconds before the other girl met a terrible fate indeed. She was so much smaller than the groundskeeper, though, and he pushed into her with such force that her feet slid back into the snow.

"Gerhardt!" she called and he knew that he should have intervened, but he could not bring himself to do so. He had fallen to his knees and started to weep before he truly knew what was happening, completely the opposite of what a real hero would do in similar circumstances, but Gerhardt was not convinced that he really was meant to be a hero.

Van Helsing wrenched his wrist out of Elizabeth's grip and she screamed Gerhardt's name one last time before the groundskeeper slashed in her general direction. She shielded her face automatically and blood dripped into the snow where the knife made contact with the palms of her hands.

BOOM

Van Helsing fell to his knees and from his knees to the floor, a look of utmost ire across his face, as to be expected when the fatal shot comes from one's own weapon. For a moment Gerhardt genuinely believed that he had had a moment of brilliance and remembered Van Helsing dropping his gun but that illusion was completely shattered when he heard his Mother's voice and turned to see her standing there, dressed in her ordinary afternoon gown and with her hair escaping its bindings, shotgun in her arms. She stared at the choking groundskeeper with a look of utmost loathing and Van Helsing squirmed, perhaps as if to make one final protest of the strange girl's fishy origins but his splutters got only one reaction: a final, fatal bullet between the eyes.

"I will not let you harm my child," said Mother, "I've wanted this one for too long."

* * *

When Victor woke, he was alone. He stepped out of his room and out onto the landing, staring out at the emptiness that seemed to have consumed him. Everything was silent and still, as if time itself had had frozen and, while Victor was not the sort of person to subscribe to such ideologies, he could not help but feel there was some proof of the theory in his house right then. Nothing so much as stirred or took breath and every step he took felt intrusive.

He could not hear Gerhardt telling Father about some hero he had read about, or Elizabeth cursing because she had dropped hot tea everywhere. Gone was the sound of the maids gossiping in the corridors, passing on stories of one another's families, goings on in the house and whatever jobs needed doing.

Victor felt quite uneasy, as if he had glanced behind the veil to catch a glimpse of the future, only to be caught doing so and stripped of everything. As he stared out at the shadowy entrance hall, lit by candlelight and looking almost ghostly, he could not help but feel a sense of sudden foreboding…

…a feeling that evaporated as the doors opened and everyone came strolling inside with snow in their hair, red faced from the cold and rubbing their hands together. Father led the herd and he seemed to be in something of a bad mood.

"For Heaven's sake, Caroline, was it truly necessary?" He was shouting, all but beating the snow from his clothes. "I shall have to find a new groundskeeper and there's sure to be questions!"

Mother followed, Elizabeth close behind and Victor frowned when he noticed that the latter's hands were dripping with blood. Mother's mood was not much better than Father's.

"You were not there, Alphonse, you did not see him! Did you expect me to stand and watch as he slaughtered both Elizabeth and your son or perhaps give helpful advice?"

Mother never raised her voice unless it was absolutely necessary and she never argued with Father in such public places, either. If she ever disagreed with him it was usually in the passive sense, putting forward her own opinion for consideration and staying quiet when it was shot down.

"I did not expect you to kill the man!" Father replied, the exasperation clear.

Victor watched as a couple of stewards stepped through the doors, followed by a few maids, giving them directions to the serving staff quarters. One of the stewards seemed to have a bundle in his arms that was wrapped in Elizabeth's cloak and he watched as the group disappeared along one of the side corridors.

He descended the stairs himself at that point, approaching Elizabeth and placing a hand on her shoulder. She had never felt so cold before and turned to him as if spooked by his touch.

"Victor," she breathed, reaching out to take his arm but changing her mind once she remembered the wound on her hand. Victor turned it over so that the palm faced the floor and he could plant a kiss on the knuckles.

"You can tell me all about it later," he said, placing one kiss on her forehead and another on her cheek, scarcely able to believe she was real in front of him. "Do you know? The strangest thing happened to me today. When I woke up, I was convinced I'd lost you. All of you."

Elizabeth laughed.

"While you were sleeping you almost did."


	13. Chapter 13

"I understand your concerns, Ma'am and I apologise for the inconvenience, but the location of your neighbour's begonias doesn't constitute a matter for the Mayor's office," said Beth, holding the phone receiver in place with her shoulder so that she could continue typing.

_Especially not when it's lunchtime and I have a greasy burger on my desk._

"Have you considered talking with your neighbour?" she asked, staring wistfully at the foil wrapping. She had been about to open it up and take a bite when Mrs Grayson called for what must have been the fourth time that week with another complaint about her neighbour's 'suspicious' behaviour. Sometimes Beth would transfer Mrs Grayson directly to Regina for amusement, though she wouldn't dream of doing it right then, no matter how good her burger looked.

It was rare that Beth was barred from Regina's office, considering how much dusting and organising the place took, but when it did happen it was usually for one reason: a visit from the Sheriff. Beth learned the reason why the hard way when she was still new and tried to make a good impression by going inside to offer everyone a cup of coffee. Some of the things she had seen and heard in there were permanently etched into her brain, from the sight of the Sheriff with his trousers round his ankles, to Regina spread-eagled across the desk, her underwear halfway across the room. Initially Beth had been so scared that she was going to get fired that she immediately squeaked out an apology and turned to run out of the room, only for Regina to call her back.

In the end, Regina was completely nonchalant about it all, as if she had been caught doing something as ordinary as stirring a cup of coffee. She walked over to Beth, still half-dressed and in no hurry to change that state of affairs and stroked a hand down the side of her face. It was every bit like staring down a cobra.

"Elizabeth," Regina had said. "You will not say a word about this to anyone. Do you understand?"

Regina only touched her face, but Beth's throat tightened up as if she had made some attempt to choke her and she knew with a perfect sort of clarity that did not belong to her that she would not say a word about what she had seen.

She spotted the Sheriff at the diner a couple of days later while deciding what to order. He gave her his usual lopsided smile, but all Beth could think about was how she had seen him without underwear and her response was to blush a bright red. She had not seen a man in any state of nakedness at that point, for her night with Whale came later, so she did not know how to approach him afterwards and settled for pretending she was quite fascinated with the specials board. Graham seemed to be feeling just as awkward about the situation as she was, for he gradually made his way over and pretended to be looking at the board too.

"You know, the burgers here aren't too bad," he said. "I'm quite partial to the ones with bacon on; just don't tell our lady Mayor, alright?"

Beth had giggled despite herself.

"I might have to try one," she'd said, prompting Graham to give her a brotherly pat on the shoulder.

"Listen," he said. "About what happened in the office the other day… I'd never want to put you in a position-"

He paused, seeming to realise how his words could be interpreted and going a bright shade of pink.

"What I meant to say was," he started, giving up because he was laughing at himself and the awkward situation in which they'd found themselves. Beth was laughing at him too before she could stop herself.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "It's none of my business what you and Regina do in your spare time."

The Sheriff paid for her burger and it became something of a tradition of theirs. Whenever he stopped by the Mayor's office for a private meeting he would bring a greasy burger by way of apology.

"Okay Mrs Grayson," she said, deciding enough was enough. "I'm sorry for wasting your time, but please if you have any other concerns, contact the Sheriff's office."

She practically slammed the phone receiver back into place and tore open the foil packaging of her burger. There was something very conspiratorial about tucking into something so fatty while Regina was otherwise occupied and bacon had never tasted so good. She took a larger bite than she ordinarily would and allowed the mix of sauce and meat juices to drip down her chin, without bothering to wipe it off straight away. Nobody was around, she reasoned, for she had cleared most of Regina's appointments and made it perfectly clear to anyone who called in that the Mayor was not able to deal with their problems.

That's why it was such a terrible shock when the office door opened and a redheaded woman walked in with a brown paper bag.

_Shit_

Beth all but dropped the burger and wiped the grease off her chin in one fast motion, though if the stranger thought anything of it she didn't say anything.

"Can I help you?" she asked, wiping her hands on a tissue. The other woman sat down on the opposite side of the desk, as casually as if she had an appointment and placed the paper bag in front of her.

"I hope so," she said. "I'm Melody, Graham's girlfriend. I was hoping to meet him for lunch. See?"

She pointed to the bag.

"Peanut butter with banana slices, his favourite! I think…"

Graham didn't talk about his girlfriend much, but Beth had known he had one. It was almost impossible for anyone in Storybrooke to keep anything well and truly to themselves and Beth couldn't help but think that it was something of a miracle that the truth about Regina's downtime wasn't public knowledge. She'd always imagined that his girlfriend would be different, though, from what she had heard. More often than not, Graham was describing the brand new topic they had found to argue over or her terrible cooking, or how on the few occasions he was actually home and cooked a meal she had mysteriously disappeared. Graham was fairly convinced that she was seeing some other guy and Beth had been horrified at the very thought. Granted, a lot of that she put down to jealousy. She couldn't get just one guy to call her back, let alone two.

Anyway, she had always envisioned Melody Sands as some dreadful, fire-breathing harpy, but the real thing was very different. She seemed genuinely proud of herself for fashioning together a peanut butter sandwich and, while Beth knew it was the first time they'd met, she could have sworn that somewhere at the back of her mind there was a flicker of recognition. She looked at the paper bag and felt _sympathy_, which was the last thing she expected from that scenario.

"Graham's currently in a private meeting with the Mayor," said Beth, "but I can pass it on to him when he comes out if you want?"

"It's lunchtime," laughed Melody. "I know he's committed to his job and everything, but couldn't you just tell him I'm here?"

All Beth had wanted to do was eat her burger and daydream about Whale striding out of the water in an oversized shirt just like Colin Firth in _Pride and Prejudice, _but all of a sudden she had been backed into a corner. If she said 'no' to Melody, then she just knew she would ask 'why' and that was a very loaded question, particularly since she could not possibly give her an honest answer. However, if she went to fetch Graham then that meant strolling right into Regina's office and interrupting her downtime, which was never a good idea.

She sighed despairingly as she climbed out of her chair, thinking to herself that it was the first time she had met Melody Sands and already it felt as if she was going to be the death of her.

* * *

Father dealt with Elizabeth's hands once he and Mother had finally stopped arguing and Mother had retired to bed. Once they had stopped arguing about the fact that Van Helsing was dead to begin with, Father made the mistake of thinking Mother had backed down and suggested making funeral arrangements, which only incensed her further.

"You want to bury that _monster_?!" Mother responded. "No. I shall not allow it. A thousand slights I would beg you do at my expense but that, Alphonse, goes too far."

Ever since they returned from the woods, Gerhardt had watched everything unfold from the safest position, which was by the front doors. It took every shred of willpower he had not to turn tail and run back into the snow, into the village and as far away from the house as possible, for every time he looked at Elizabeth's hands, or Father's looks of despair or Mother's ones of anger, he felt so ashamed that he wished he had never done so.

They had left Van Helsing in a mess of blood and snow outside of his ramshackle cottage, staring up at the stars with his one ghostly eye. Gerhardt had tried to focus on Mother's retreating back every step of the way, trying his hardest not to look at the body for fear of being judged. It was not as effective as he had hoped, for occasionally he would glance down at the floor and notice spots of blood from Elizabeth's hands dripping onto the snow. Gerhardt always clenched his own hands when he saw those, for the guilt he felt at the sight was such that it was almost as if he had dealt the blow himself.

The heroes in all of his stories were brave and unyielding and would never have quailed at a foe like Van Helsing, much less allowed their Fair Maiden to come to any harm. Gerhardt knew that he should have been in control of the situation and, as a son of the House of Frankenstein, his presence alone should have been enough of a deterrent for the old groundskeeper's actions. The fact that it hadn't been and when it mattered most all Gerhardt had been able to do was watch everything unfold was troubling. Everybody else had stood up to Van Helsing as if he was nothing more than a badly behaved mongrel and in the end the person to deliver the fatal shot, which by rights should have been him, was Mother. Father would never have stood and watched as Van Helsing attacked the family and Victor had the authority of the eldest son. If he had been there then he would almost certainly have dived in to protect Elizabeth.

That night should have been Gerhardt's moment of heroism, a chance to prove himself as more than just the second son, but instead the only thing he proved was that he was a cowardly little boy. It seemed wrong, somehow, that Elizabeth was the one with blood on her hands when all of it was his fault. If he had been braver then perhaps everything could have been resolved more amicably.

He watched as Father took Elizabeth into his study, knowing he could not follow. He could not go in there and be the elephant in the room while her wounds were stitched up. Nobody would comment on it or tell him it was his fault, of that he was certain, but that did not make it any less true. Elizabeth howled like a banshee when Father first dripped alcohol onto her hands and Gerhardt clenched his own as he heard her scream, tightening his grip until his knuckles went white.

He didn't notice the serving girl approach until she was quite close by and even then she had to clear her throat a couple of times to get his attention.

"Young Master," she said, pausing as Elizabeth's hisses of pain erupted from the study. "Our guest is ready for visitors and she has expressed a wish to speak with Miss Elizabeth."

What with everything that had happened, Gerhardt had almost forgotten about the girl they had rescued.

"Thank you," he replied. "I shall let her know at once."

He turned back towards the study door, his stomach churning, thinking that 'at once' was perhaps an exaggeration.

* * *

Beth stood outside Regina's office door for several minutes before finally gathering the courage to knock. She knew that there was no possible outcome where she was not at the very least scolded, but at the back of her mind she hoped that she had caught Regina during a moment of such intense pleasure that it was impossible for her to get cross. She wondered how on earth she would know how to time something like that, though, besides the obvious method of listening to the noises coming through the door, which she found quite repulsive. However, the longer she stood there wondering what to do with only Regina's delighted gasps to break the silence, the more she realised that it must have looked that that _was_ what she was doing and she blushed furiously, knocking quickly to get it all over and done with.

Regina fell silent almost immediately and Beth turned away from the door as hushed voices broke out, followed by the sound of multiple papers falling to the floor and footsteps. When the Mayor of Storybrooke finally opened the door she did not look impressed and hadn't buttoned up her blouse all of the way.

"This had better be important," she said, combing stray strands of hair out of her eyes and leaning against the door frame. Through the gap, Beth could see Graham pulling on his jeans and adjusting his belt buckle. Beth stared for a few moments more than she meant to, though justified herself with the notion that the man _did_ look like an underwear model.

"Could you tell the Sheriff that Melody's waiting for him at my desk?" she asked.

At the mention of 'Melody', Graham poked his head over Regina's shoulder.

"Melody?" he asked, the panic clear in his voice. "Are you sure?"

Beth raised a single eyebrow and Graham swore, retreating back into the office to find his shirt.

"Well…don't just stand there," said Regina. "Go and get rid of her!"

"What, you don't think I tried? She brought sandwiches."

Regina sighed and walked back into her office, dragging Graham's shirt out of his hands and tossing it back onto the floor.

"I don't care how you do it," she said, reaching for the door handle. "Just make sure she's gone when I get back."

"Could you put a time estimate on-"

Regina slammed the door shut by way of reply.

* * *

Arista was the oldest of King Triton's daughters, a fact that she found quite appropriate, for no daughter born since had ever been able to better her in terms of beauty or intelligence. She was the original and the mould from which every daughter that followed was shaped with varying degrees of success. Arista's cunning was the toast of the undersea kingdom and her beauty the topic of songs; an honour that nobody else had received even after centuries of trying.

Oh, how Arista missed the ocean. She missed lying on her back on the sea bed and listening to the song of her Mother Sea. The oceans had no words in the usual sense, but they were far from silent, instead absorbing the world's memories and echoing the sound in a language most did not understand. Everything in the world revolved around the processes of water, from the complex intricacies of magic to more basic things such as a woman's moon blood waxing and waning with the tides. Water was a part of all things, for the sea was the Mother of all things and the Merfolk were its trueborn children, capable of hearing its voice.

As water was a part of all things, so were the ocean's songs. The ocean sang joyfully of children dancing under cypress trees, marvelled over the discovery of a new kind of root and wept over the death of some poor widower's cat that had happened many centuries beforehand. Everything in the world left ripples on the ocean of varying magnitude and the song of Mother Sea was built from those notes. Nothing was ever forgotten in the oceans, nothing ever died or ceased to be. Merfolk lived for centuries without a fear of death, for they knew that when their bodies rotted away to nothing they would still live on as a note in the oceansong, a great honour if ever there was one.

Since Merfolk understood so much about the world that many others did not, it was only natural that they considered themselves the superior of any other creature alive. The humans were the only ones to even try and prove otherwise, a fact that brought great amusement to the undersea kingdom. Humans never heard the oceansong and only felt the embrace of Mother Sea when they drowned; the equivalent of children locked in a dark room from birth. They understood nothing of their own existence and fought wars against one another for sake of meaning. Until only recently, Arista could have counted everything she knew about them on the fingers of one hand, and it would not have mattered to her. Humans were not made to be understood and that was the way it was meant to be.

Arista never forgot her initiation ceremony on the day she turned sixteen. The initiation ceremony celebrated a Mermaid's transition into womanhood, the final stage of her own, personal oceansong. Merfolk believed that their souls existed as music and the tune was determined by the choices they made in life; remembering their dead by singing of them, rather than speaking of the actions they had taken. Arista wanted nothing more than for hers to be a song of utmost triumph and she decorated her hair that night with shaking hands.

On her sixteenth birthday, it was the task of a Mermaid to travel onto land at sunset and swap her fins for legs, returning at sunrise once she had performed a trial of sorts. Arista had wept at the sight of her strange, human appendages, much preferring the radiant red fins that were the envy of all of her sisters. The skin broke and blistered easily and, when she finally learned how to navigate her feet, each step was painful and bloody. Arista did not much like the way the night air left her feeling naked; she missed the embrace of the ocean and how easily she could move underwater. She staggered across the beach, wincing at the uncomfortable sensation of sand between her toes but all of the while willing herself to move forward. If she did not prove herself worthy then her soul song would be one of disappointment and that was a punishment far worse than death.

A group of sailors had docked not far from where she emerged and retired into the village for the night, leaving nothing but a couple of drunks aboard the ship. Arista had climbed aboard and watched them from the shadows until only one man remained awake.

Humans were separated from the ocean's music long before their Merfolk cousins; they told happy stories to their babes about the sea and set up lodgings beside it without truly understanding what lived in the briny depths. Whenever they drew pictures of Mermaids, they painted them as beautiful young women that were happy to spend their days sitting atop rocks and combing their hair. The truth was a great deal more sinister.

The last man lit his pipe and stared out across the seas and, when Arista was certain he was the last one awake, she began to sing. She was used to singing alongside the oceansong and her voice sounded far different in the open air – it was a lovely sound, echoing over everything around her and filling everything with song. The last man took a drag from his pipe and turned to look where the music was coming from. When he saw the beautiful girl standing on his ship, he wandered closer, staring at her with blank eyes. She lulled him away from the ship, back onto the sands and towards the ocean, never once breaking her tune or eye contact. He reached for her when the water was waist high and only then did she allow him to touch her, letting him stretch his arms around her body. The second he reached for her, she touched his hand and dragged him under the water until the air from his lungs was completely depleted. The song she sang for him still resonated in his ears and he did not even bother to struggle, embracing the arms of the ocean and closing his eyes as though quite relieved.

They stripped the flesh from his bones that night until there was nothing left of him. Arista was honoured with the first bite and she could never take her eyes away from the peaceful expression across the man's face. She felt she understood everything that night about Merfolk and humans and the way things were. Humans did not understand that they were grazing cattle, devoid of a soul half as complex as an Oceanborn's and to be chosen for a Mermaid's supper was a high honour indeed. There was no shame in luring them into the ocean to die, for that was all they had ever been created for.

She thought she understood it all and accepted every offer her Father presented to her. She travelled out on the hunts with a grin on her face and soon became the best of her kind, ruthlessly hunting out any human she could and dragging them down to the depths. Soon that same little fishing village she had visited on her sixteenth birthday told very different stories of Mermaids. No longer did they speak of beautiful women combing their hair, but of monsters crawling out of the water and stealing babes from birthing beds. Arista herself believed that that particular verse was a wonderful addition to her soulsong and proudly told anyone who would listen about how legendary she was on land, how feared and loathed by the cattlefolk. It was only accurate that her fins were so red, after all, for the humans spoke of her like some goddess of chaos and death.

Only one person in the entire undersea kingdom disapproved of her efforts and that was her youngest sister, Ariel, a fact that should not really have surprised her. Ariel had always been Triton's favourite, the softest and pudgiest of his children and the only one with a faintest hint of naivety about her. Whenever the hunters brought a human back and stripped them bare of their possessions, Ariel could be found not long afterwards, examining them with a misplaced kind of fascination. Arista wished she had kept count of all of the times she had had to drag Ariel out of one shipwreck or another, scolding her for being so fascinated by a mouldy clock that she had missed supper.

"I do wish you would stop talking about humans as if they are stupid," Ariel often said to her, pouting most seriously. "If you bothered to look at some of the wonderful things they've invented, you'd know that's not true at all."

Arista had laughed and stroked her fingers through her sister's hair. Red. Just like hers.

In the years that followed, Ariel blossomed into womanhood. Suddenly it no longer seemed to matter how brilliant a hunter Arista was or how beautiful; all anybody cared about was how delicate and kind Ariel was. Arista never once admitted to feelings of jealousy, though she supposed everyone must have realised the truth from the way she spoke of her sister afterwards. If ever anyone praised Ariel, she immediately felt the need to point out how weak she was for being so enamoured by humans and whenever Ariel sang, Arista reminded herself that it did not matter how wonderful Ariel's voice was, for her soulsong would never be one of honour or triumph.

The night before Ariel's trial, Triton threw an enormous banquet in her honour. He had never done so for any of his other daughters and, for the most part, nobody seemed to mind. Arista had never been forgotten in such a way before and was not sure how to deal with the newfound emotions, so spent most of the evening helping herself to wine. It was a decision she would later come to regret, for when Triton made a speech regarding the guest of honour, only to discover she had been absent for most of the night, Arista had lost all of the necessary self-control to prevent her from revealing that Ariel was probably in her 'special place', preparing.

Ariel's 'special place' had come about as a result of necessity after she began to hoard away human objects to prevent them from being destroyed. Arista had always been fond of her childish little sister's 'habit' and knew that if their Father ever saw just how many things she had collected over the years he would almost certainly be furious. It went against everything their people had ever known, everything they stood for and, before jealousy kicked in, Arista had pointed out a cave on the outskirts of the kingdom where she could safely keep everything in one place. On the night of the banquet, the only generosity coming from Arista was to her Father as she told him the exact location.

She did not go with him as he travelled away to fetch Ariel, but several of her sisters did and they informed her of what happened next. Triton had found her surrounded by plates and clocks and statues that she had rescued from shipwrecks and in his rage had destroyed everything. Arista had felt something like a flicker of guilt, though that was quickly replaced by pride as Triton patted her on the shoulder and thanked her for telling him the truth.

"I worry about Ariel," he had said, sinking onto his throne. "Perhaps I was too harsh…"

"You did what you had to, Father," Arista had quickly replied and he sighed.

"Yes, perhaps you're right. After she kills her first man tomorrow, things may be different. Once she sees what they truly are…she will understand."

At the time, Arista had not cared one whit either way. She had already brought great shame upon Ariel to the point where nobody sang of her beauty or her delicacy, but spoke in hushed whispers of how naïve and simpleminded she was, which worked in Arista's favour, for everyone sang instead of her strong and noble older sister and what a shame it was that they could not have been more alike. Of course, looking back, she wished she had made an effort to seek Ariel out and apologise. Maybe then things would have ended differently.

Ariel disappeared that night and did not show up for her trial. Triton sent out search parties to find her without any luck and it was only a matter of time before the sea was flooded with rumours. Some said that she had made some sort of deal with the Dark One Rumpelstiltskin, while others said it was the Dark Queen Regina. Arista began to wish more than anything that she could have her sweet hearted sister back, even if it was just for an hour, so that she could bundle her into her arms, weep and apologise for letting her jealousy overpower her so easily.

Usually Merfolk were only able to stay on land for a limited amount of time, for almost as soon as they set foot out of the water they succumbed to dehydration. In short bursts, this process was not fatal, but for any longer than a night it almost certainly was. The trial of Mermaids was more than just a test of ability, for failures were always left behind to die. The moment Ariel disappeared, however, Triton changed all of the rules. He enchanted all of his daughters and gave them the strength to walk on land for as long as they wished in the hopes that by scouring the farthest lands somebody would find her. There was a catch, though. Once the Merfolk had changed their fins to legs they were forbidden from eating anything and permitted to drink water and water alone. If they gave in to temptation and ate food from the land then they would be unable to return to the seas and forced to live as a human forever.

Arista had led the search party, swimming the fastest and the farthest, telling her sisters not to fear for they would find Ariel in a wreck or something, completely confused about all of the fuss.

Aquata was the first to die. She was beheaded by the Queen of Hearts.

Adella was the first to leave, after stuffing herself with Turkish Delight at the behest of a strange White Witch in a snowy land. She lost her fins and forgot her name and it took about three days to persuade everyone left to leave her behind.

Andrina found a new home in Neverland, having fallen in love with the customs of the Merfolk there. The day before they left, she was shot in the eye by a beautiful Warrior named Tiger Lily.

Allana was kidnapped by pirates mid journey and her remains sold to apothecaries.

Before long, Arista and Attina were the only two left and the search for Ariel looked even more hopeless than ever. She did not mention it to Attina, for the girl was simpleminded and prone to panic, but Arista was somewhat convinced that her youngest sister had met a terrible end, much like the others. She was not sure how she would break the news to her beloved Father that while he had once had seven daughters he now had only two and each new leg of the journey brought her more despair than she thought possible.

_Here now, sister,_ she found herself thinking whenever she and Attina took a different current, _this shall be the one where we find you._

Geneva was their last stop in more ways than one.

Of course, at the time Arista had not known that it was called Geneva or even what it was; only that it was exceedingly cold, they had been swimming for days and she was hungry. She asked Attina to wait for her in a cave downstream while she travelled into the village to find them something to eat, which turned out to be a poverty stricken bean pole of a girl that wept throughout her song and barely even struggled when Arista tore out her throat. She had no fight left in her and, glancing round at what few possessions she had, it was not difficult to see why. Arista dragged the girl's body into the river before heading back out to Attina.

And that was when Arista heard the gunshots.

She returned to the cave where she had left her last remaining sister only a matter of hours before and dug her nails into the palms when she found it empty. She took to the surface and dragged herself out, just in time to see a hulking human kicking her sister's body aside, laughing at the lifeless way in which it landed.

Arista remembered the girl from the village that she had killed, that mousy brown squealing thing that had lived alone in a cold ramshackle house. She had had nothing and no one and when death stared her in the face she had not bothered to try and protest. Once upon a time Arista would have leapt at the human before her and eaten him alive, just to brag about it later on to anyone that would listen. She did not see the point now that she had no sisters left to brag to. Instead, she sank to the floor and lifted Attina's body into her arms, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. She had always thought of Merfolk as proficient hunters and everything else as pathetic prey, but the past few years had made her doubt everything she knew. She felt a strange connection to that girl from the village, who had embraced death as an old friend.

She was sure she was ready to die and she was certain that she would have, had Elizabeth Lavenza not dived onto the scene.

Arista had only ever seen humans at their worst, on the cusp of death and begging for their lives. She had never been on the other side of that scenario or around to witness the human fortitude that Ariel had loved to lecture her about so much. The human girl did not know her, yet she dragged the warm cloak from her own body and wrapped it around Arista's own, had not witnessed any of what had gone on before, yet was determined to protect her life. Before the night was out that same human had shed blood for her and Arista could only sit and stare.

Arista had always laughed at the way Ariel had begged for her to show mercy to humans, thinking of it as a sign of weakness, but after Elizabeth Lavenza saved her life she knew she had been wrong about everything. Ariel's soulsong would have been one of strength and triumph and love, while disappointment and sadness was far more fitting of her own. As humans carried her into the house and took her down into the serving quarters, she closed her eyes and wished she knew where Ariel was so that she could tell her everything. So much had changed since they last talked.

When Elizabeth Lavenza walked into the room to see her, Arista was wearing a plain black servant's gown and nibbling pieces of bread. The servants had lit a fire to warm her from the after effects of the snow and the floorboards were delightfully warm under her bare feet. She knew that the second the bread touched her lips she had given up her only chance at returning to the undersea kingdom, but that was only a small sacrifice to make. Just like the dead girl, whose body would probably never be found, Arista had nothing left. No sisters to reminisce with, no home to go back to. She would rather never go back at all than return as a failure.

"I thank you for every kindness you have showed to me," Arista said to Elizabeth, bowing her head as she had seen the servants do. "Though I am afraid I have no money to repay you. If you are not insulted by such gestures, I should like to offer you my life in exchange. If it were not for you, I should surely have perished tonight."

Elizabeth seemed surprised by her outburst and for a moment Arista wondered if she had said the wrong thing, but then the boy spoke. She recognised him from the forest, the one who had hesitated.

"You could take her on as a Lady's Maid!" he said, the hope clear in his words.

An older boy cleared his throat behind them.

"Well it is about time," he said, addressing a grown man, who everyone addressed as the Lord and Master. "Mother shall soon be in confinement, after all."

The Lord of the house sighed deeply, as if the night's events had been most trying.

"Do you have any experience as a Lady's Maid?" he asked.

"All the experience one could need," Arista said, quite truthfully. "I was the oldest of seven daughters, after all. I am sure there is no crisis I am not prepared for."

Elizabeth stepped forward and took Arista's hands in her own, albeit lightly.

"Since we are to become better acquainted, it is only fair that we know each other's names," she said. "My name is Elizabeth Lavenza. What would you have me call you?"

Arista chewed her lip. She knew she could not give them her undersea name, for it would stand out like a sore thumb amongst humans. If anyone came looking for her then her world would be shattered immediately.

"My name is Justine," she said. "Justine Moritz."

In the years that followed, Arista found a great significance in her human name. Not only did it belong to the last human she had ever killed as Arista of the Oceanborn, but it was also the first lie she had ever told.

* * *

The Mayor's secretary had been gone for quite some time. It took all of two minutes for Melody to examine all of the filing cabinets in the room for any sign of Dr Whale's files and, having had no luck, she sat at the secretary's computer and accessed her private documents.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, there was hardly anything of interest besides a few e-mails from Ruby Lucas, the girl from the diner who seemed to be the only girl in town that Whale hadn't slept with. The last e-mail was particularly interesting.

_Dude you need to get over him! I told you you should never have bought that pie!_

_Totally a jerk for standing you up, though._

_xox _

At first Melody had wondered why that seemed familiar and then she remembered the day that she'd found Whale's notebook. While in the closet, she was almost positive that she had overheard Whale talking to a woman about an apple pie, a girl that he had seemed completely dismissive of when she finally let herself out. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that he had referred to her as Beth, which just so happened to be the name of the secretary whose desk she sat at.

Melody was hardly a firm believer in coincidences and she had already formulated a plan when Beth returned. She looked incredibly apologetic, an expression that shattered the second she saw Melody sitting at her computer.

"W-what are you doing?!" she asked. "Those are confidential documents! I could-"

"I'm sorry," said Melody, rising to her feet. "It's just that…well…my boss, Dr Whale, mentioned the other day that he couldn't remember if his licence was still valid and the files at the hospital had been moved here."

At the mention of Dr Whale, Beth seemed a lot less pissed and a lot more interested and Melody knew she had her.

"I can check on the computer if his license is still valid," she said, motioning for Melody to move aside and sitting down at her desk again, typing a few words and loading up a few documents. "Though I should certainly imagine that it is…"

"There were a few other things he wanted to double check," Melody chipped in. "Some of our interns have been complaining that their own information has been entered incorrectly, so we've been advised to go over everything."

Beth glanced up at her from her computer screen.

"It's unusual for interns to view their personal files directly," she said. "How did they find this out?"

_Shit_

"It's not really my department," she said. It seemed convincing enough, for Beth smiled warmly and leaned back in her chair.

"Dr Whale's file is kept in a locked cabinet in the Mayor's office," she said. "If he wants to transfer it back to the hospital then he'll have to go through official channels. I could probably make him an appointment to see Regina next Tuesday…"

She reached for an appointment book, but Melody immediately shook her head.

"I'll have to ask him before making any appointments on his behalf," she said. "I take it Graham's not coming for lunch?"

Beth looked sheepish once again and Melody picked up the paper bag.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I'll tell Dr Whale you were really helpful."

As she walked out of the door, just one thing was going through her head and that was what could possibly have been contained in Dr Whale's file that warranted locking it up in the Mayor's office.

She discarded the empty paper bag in the dumpster outside, laughing at her own stupid ideas.


	14. Chapter 14

In the days that followed the incident with Van Helsing, Lord and Lady Frankenstein spent much of their time drafting out letters. Lady Frankenstein's family still had some connections to Austrian nobility, a detail that proved most useful when setting up a ball. She knew exactly whose opinion mattered most about who to invite, or so it seemed anyway. Elizabeth could not help but notice that although most of the letters were written in her handwriting, the words were not always her own, for Lord Frankenstein was the one who dictated which ones were actually sent and even suggested some other names of his own. It seemed quite strange to her, for Lord Frankenstein was ordinarily quite happy to allow his wife to control such things and his sudden rush of hard-headedness with regards to certain guests was quite out of character.

Lord Frankenstein was not the only one to act out of character. Ever since the attack, Gerhardt had spent his days pacing the house and courtyard like some sort of caged animal, remaining silent unless spoken to and seemingly incapable of looking anyone in the eye. It was a puzzle that nobody seemed capable of fixing together and Elizabeth found that the more she tried the less sense it made. Gerhardt had not found himself on the sharp side of Van Helsing's blade, so she was not sure what reason he had to brood so.

At breakfast one week after the event, he placed the slice of toast he had been staring at for the best part of fifteen minutes back on his plate and glanced across at his father. The morning post had just arrived and both Lord and Lady Frankenstein had been in the middle of discussing who had replied to what and how their tone should best be interpreted. Elizabeth had learned to ignore the fact that the majority of names they brought up came from wealthy men who wished to marry her and take her away from everything she knew.

That morning they were discussing two particularly wealthy Russians and she had to pretend to be most fascinated by the cup of tea in front of her, despite how tempting it was to jump to her feet and scream.

"Ah yes, Bezukhov..." Lord Frankenstein had said, sounding most impressed, to the irritation of his wife.

"You only say that because of his lineage, my Lord husband. It appears to me that you have never seen him dance," she said, before lifting a letter of her own. "Why not consider Andrei Bolkonsky? He is quite handsome and-"

"And engaged, my dear."

"Engagements can be broken and from what I have heard, the woman he's engaged to has nothing on our darling Elizabeth."

"Well…I suppose Nikolai is crazy enough to consider it…"

Elizabeth took a quietly furious sip of her tea before placing her hands in her lap, which in hindsight was probably not quite so discreet as it seemed, for Victor slipped his hand under the table and laced his fingers between hers. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and could not help but smile when she noticed that he was a far better actor than she. He added extra sugar to his tea most casually, as if he had nothing to hide.

And then Gerhardt began to speak.

"Father," he said. "I was wondering…I shall never be the head of this household, but that does not mean that I do not have a duty to protect it as Victor does. I wish to learn to wield a sword, if you permit me."

For a while Lord Frankenstein considered it, before finally giving him the nod.

"I used to know a gentleman in Milan who was so skilled with a sword that they said that having him by your side was the same as having forty knights," he said. "I have not heard from him for many years, though, so whether or not he still accepts students is mere speculation on my part…"

Elizabeth did not remember quite so much about Milan as she had in previous years. When she first arrived at Geneva, she could have narrated the entire layout of the household to a stranger, though as the years had gone by the subtleties of names and faces had merged into one blurry mess of sounds, smells and sights that made up that burst of feeling in her chest that she knew as _Milan_. When Lady Frankenstein had started to learn her Italian lullaby, she had closed her eyes with images of 'home' in her head, images that became distorted and broken whenever Lady Frankenstein struggled over a word or pronounced one incorrectly. Over the years, however, she came to anticipate which words would cause the problems and the images of 'home' became snowy mountains, green woodland and icy streams.

Just a couple of weeks beforehand, she had picked up a letter from an Italian Count, hoping to read through it before Lady Frankenstein did and got a terrible shock indeed. The letter was in her native tongue, that much was true, but she could only decipher a few of the words within it. In horror she had taken an Italian language book from the shelf in the library and flicked through its pages, willing herself not to scream as she realised that she only understood the basic, childish words included within the text and had to squint for quite some time at the others.

Victor had laughed at her and told her that it was fine.

"You are overreacting, Elizabeth," he had said as she sobbed on his shoulder. "I don't speak very much Italian, either."

It was then that it occurred to Elizabeth that despite her Italian name, Italian blood, Italian looks and Italian fortune, she had become as Swiss as the mountains that surrounded the house. Before long, she was having a recurring dream of her wedding day. She dreamed of marrying Victor quite often, but the ending usually changed depending on her mood or what she had eaten for dinner. After her realisation, the dream was dominated by the presence of a dark figure at the back of the hall that left as she took her vows. She always chased after the shadowy man, despite the gasps of her guests and the way her skirts gathered around her legs, taking hold of his arm mere seconds before he climbed into his carriage.

The shadow-man would turn to face her and, though she could never quite focus on his face, she always knew that it was her father and gasped each time.

"Father!" she would say. "I thought you were dead!"

In response, he would drag his arm from hers and tell her that he did not know who she was. Elizabeth would see her reflection in his carriage windows and scream when she realised that she was a near perfect golden-haired duplicate of Lady Frankenstein.

At the mention of an Italian sword master, her ears perked up. Having someone from her homeland around Geneva would reawaken the sleeping part of her, she was sure.

"Well you must write to him at once, my Lord," she said. "Perhaps if you mention that _I_ have asked for him he shall be rather more persuaded."

Gerhardt glanced across at her as if scarcely able to believe she had spoken up to defend his cause and Lord Frankenstein took a sip of tea.

"The Lavenza name _does_ still hold some weight in Italy," he said, thoughtfully. "I shall write him a letter and see how he responds."

Gerhardt had smiled at that news and, after breakfast, bade one of the manservants tie a sandbag up to one of the beams of the stables. Until a new groundskeeper was found, no one was permitted to travel outside of the courtyard and ordinarily that would have made Elizabeth incredibly miserable, but since Lord Frankenstein had been otherwise occupied with one business and another, Victor had been able to evade lessons. The pair of them watched hand in hand as Gerhardt grabbed a rake and pretended the sandbag was some sort of enemy, running forwards and backwards and using the rake as a makeshift lance.

"I had something of an epiphany this morning," said Victor, over Gerhardt's grunts and the crunch of his feet on the snow.

"Oh?" said Elizabeth, watching as he pulled a small object from his pocket.

"Father says that it is my duty to want the best for this house and these lands," he said, staring out across at the mountains over their household walls. "He says I should accept your marriage and find a wife of my own at the Ball, but I don't want that. I don't care if I'm rich or eating pheasant for dinner, because none of that matters when I think about being without you. I can scarcely imagine what my life was like before you and trying to remember is like searching for something golden in a world without colour."

He took her stitched hand in his and laid a ring in the palm. It was made of silver, with three small gems on the band and she stared into his face in confusion.

"I…where did you…"

"Mother gave it to me a couple of days before…" his eyes skimmed the partially healed wound, "before everything happened."

"Why would she give you something like this?" Elizabeth breathed, smoothing her fingertips along the smooth metal.

"I think she meant for me to give it to you. It's her own engagement ring from before she married Father," said Victor.

He glanced across at Gerhardt to see if the boy was listening.

"We currently have no groundskeeper," he said. "And on the night of the Ball there will be hundreds of strangers passing through here; no one shall spot two like us."

Elizabeth thought she caught his meaning and the idea made her sick with nerves.

"Victor what are you saying?"

"We should take the chance and run away from this place before they can marry either of us off," he said. "We could cross over into Italy and start afresh as whomever we wished. I would not be Victor Frankenstein and you would not be Elizabeth Lavenza and for a very long time we would be poor, but we would never be apart!"

He looked so deeply convinced by his own words that Elizabeth could not help but laugh.

"This is craziness, Victor!" she said, kissing him on the cheek and half expecting him to break out into laughter himself.

"Promise me you will give it some thought," he said. "And that you shall wear this ring as a symbol of our love."

"For you," she said, taking the ring and placing it on the ring finger of her right hand, "I would take on the Devil himself."

There was nobody around to scold them, so Victor leaned in for a kiss…

…just as Gerhardt gave the sandbag a particularly powerful blow and shifted an enormous pile of snow just above them. It swallowed the pair of them in a chilling embrace and Elizabeth gasped as it stole the breath from her.

"S-Sorry!" Gerhardt quickly apologised, but it was _far_ too late.

The moment was already gone. Elizabeth had gathered up her skirts and hopped over the wall, prompting Gerhardt to squeal like a little pig and run away into the stables, dropping his rake straight to the floor. Elizabeth chased after him, her face red from the cold and her ankles wet with snow. She put together a snowball as she went, admiring the way Victor's ring glimmered in the sunlight. That day she was quite convinced that she wasn't afraid of anything, though in retrospect that confidence was much like the snow that surrounded them, covering everything so that it was unrecognisable and therefore so much more beautiful, only to melt away and reveal stark reality underneath.

* * *

As Sheriff of Storybrooke, Graham Humbert knew that a lot was expected of him. He was the face of law enforcement and safety on the streets; people looked to him to feel safe and he always made certain that he never fell short of their expectations. While serious crime was something of a rarity in a town as small as Storybrooke, he arrived promptly whenever he was needed and only ever responded to the public in a firm, professional manner while on-duty. He knew that he needed the town's respect if he was ever to keep them in check, particularly since for a man in his position he _was_ awfully young.

He often had moments of quiet consideration, where it would occur to him that he had done rather well. He would return to his apartment after a long day in the office, take a beer from the fridge and glance over at Melody's things scattered round the place. It was the stereotypical 'ideal scenario' and he knew that he should have felt grateful or lucky at the very least that it was his life.

The really strange part was that he didn't. When he came home from work, he didn't feel content, nor did he feel any kind of triumph when he solved a case. He knew that he should have felt guilty after staying in the office with Regina, knowing that Melody had come to meet him for lunch, yet somehow he did not. Even as he watched Regina button up her blouse and hide the black lace of her bra, he knew that while he was essentially free to go and find Melody, he would not do so. Instead he watched out of the corner of his eye as the town Mayor applied and then reapplied her lipstick, smoothed down her hair and climbed down off her desk.

Silence always overpowered them both whenever Regina needed him close. She would never go so far as to say she needed him of course, but the words were there in her body language. She would ask him to stop by her office several hours before lunch and never said a word to him after the door was closed. They never commented on what happened during their time together and even seemed completely aloof to one another at times. Regina would ask about Melody, about how the apartment was coming along and how busy he had been of late. The second the door to her office, bedroom and sometimes even car shut, however, that pretence evaporated and they stopped being the Sheriff and the Mayor. Sometimes it seemed that they even stopped being human for a short while.

As Regina slipped her shoes back on she was all business once again, as if nothing had happened and picked up the file that she had been looking at when he arrived. Six months to the day, Regina's term as Mayor would be over and she was already making preparations for her voting campaign. Only a couple of days ago he had been in the middle of rescuing a kitten from the top of a tree (a true Storybrooke emergency) when Regina showed up and took charge of the situation, making completely certain that Sidney Glass was around to take plenty of photographs for _The Daily Mirror_. Sidney had already pledged his allegiance, it seemed, and Graham knew that he was expected to do the same.

She laid the folder flat on the desk and opened it up to the end page, before lifting the receiver of her phone and pressing a button.

"Beth," she said, after a couple of seconds had passed. "My office. Now."

Since he knew to read between the lines with Regina, he did not need to be told that being interrupted had put her in a terrible mood. She had not been able to focus quite so much after Beth had left and her climax was slow and disappointing. It was probably a good idea for him to get out of sight, since Regina could be quite cruel when she had not been suitably gratified. Without saying a word, he turned and reached for the office door, patting Beth on the shoulder as he passed her.

He knew he should have felt guilty about that too, considering how nervous she looked, fiddling with a silver ring she had on over and over.

Suffice to say, he didn't.

* * *

After the first lie, Justine's second and third came quickly. After telling the other housemaids that she was from a foreign country, they did not bat an eyelid when she asked them questions about what were probably quite ordinary things. Every evening before bed, the serving maids would gather around the fireplace in their own quarters and exchange stories, mostly about the everyday events of the house, though with a sprinkling of gossip too. Since Justine was still considered new, her first few nights by the fire consisted of them asking her about her past and the events that had led up to her arriving at the house. Naturally, she could not tell them the truth, so instead she made up some grand tale about rescuing a kidnapped sister from sailors. It felt strange to tell a story without music, but she presumed she must have told it well, for the other servants gasped in all of the right places and gave her extra slices of pie.

She had spent so much of her life believing humans to be dross and unintelligent and although she did not entirely approve of some of the sloppy messes they called food or the itchy fabrics they used to cover their bodies, she had to admit that they were not without their surprises. She was mystified by the strange opening between her thighs and spent the majority of her first bath tracing her fingers along the soft flesh, shuddering whenever she caught a particularly tender spot.

Mermaids did not reproduce in the usual sense, so Justine's understanding of gender politics was somewhat askew too. The only difference between Mermaids and Mermen while in the water was purely visual and not a matter of strength as the humans had conditioned themselves to believe and the reason they bothered to distinguish the sexes at all only became relevant around a youngster's sixteenth birthday. The trial of a mermaid when she came of age was to hunt a human, but for a merman it was quite different. His job when on land was to enter the house of a spinster and leave her with child – a child that would be gifted to the ocean the moment the midwives saw what it was. Merfolk fell in love on occasion but that affection rarely ended with offspring, since Mermaids could not live out of the water long enough to bear a child.

Nothing encapsulated the mystery of human relationships better than her new mistress. Merfolk who fell in love were considered wiser than most, but the opposite appeared to be true of humans, a fact proved by Elizabeth's refusal to sit still in evenings while she braided her hair, instead giggling and admiring a ring that Victor had given to her. It _was_ a pretty, sparkling thing, but for one who had once spent her life dragging her sister from legendary shipwrecks, it was fairly ordinary looking. Against her better judgement, she asked her one evening why the ring was so significant to her and why she refused to let it leave her sight.

Elizabeth had been bathing at the time, with her hair bundled up above her head. She had been persuaded to take off her gown and her crucifix but was incredibly stubborn about the ring.

"But it is just a trinket, same as any other, my Lady," Justine had argued. "If it gets tarnished by your soap..."

"I promised Victor I would wear this as a symbol of our love," was Elizabeth's reply. "If soap should tarnish it, then so be it!"

Justine did not know very much about Victor, save for how fond Elizabeth was of him. She had passed on messages to him on her behalf and knew from conversations with the other serving staff that he was destined to inherit the house after the current Lord Frankenstein, though she had not been able to gauge very much of his personality. He was polite enough and seemed intelligent, though changeable too. How he acted in a given situation differed largely depending on who he was with. He seemed far more inspired to act shrewdly when with his Father, but abandoned his books and laughed out loud when with Elizabeth. The most important thing, however, was that Elizabeth thought the world of him.

Merfolk usually picked out partners whose soul song most resembled their own and therefore who was their 'soul mate'. The better a couple 'matched', the purer their love was said to be, so it was quite strange to learn that while some humans chose lovers just like them, others chose a partner who was their opposite in every way. Elizabeth and Victor were completely different souls, yet still they desired on another's company above anything else.

"The young Master must care a great deal for you to give you such a gift," Justine commented and Elizabeth grinned in response. She glanced around the room as if to check for any eavesdroppers before climbing onto her knees in the bathtub.

"If I tell you a secret, do you promise never to tell anyone?" she said, her eyes wide with excitement. Justine's stomach lurched uncomfortably as she remembered that she had last seen such an expression on Ariel's face.

"I…I promise, my Lady," she responded.

"Victor has asked me to marry _him_ instead of some boring noble as his Father wishes!" Elizabeth all but exploded. "We're going to run away together!"

Justine stared at her, from the way she quivered with excitement to the way she seemed so sure that everything had fallen into place.

"Running away from one's family is no small decision, my Lady," she warned. "It is a heavy sacrifice to make; one that bears little fruit in return."

Elizabeth laughed and leaned back in the bathtub, her hair spilling over the side.

"Victor and I have already planned it," she said. "We shall head to Italy, where my family name was so respected before, and then marry when we are of an age. You should come with us! Perhaps _you_ shall find somebody to love!"

Justine was quite bewildered by how her Mistress could view the world in such a simplistic way and yet, at the same time, it warmed her heart. Elizabeth was so full of hope and joy – the soul sister of Ariel if ever there was one.

"I should be happy to come with you, though I doubt very much that I will ever fall in love," she said, arranging Elizabeth's nightgown on the bed. "I may find a man who enjoys the idea of me, but he could never understand me and that is the saddest sort of love there is."

Elizabeth's response to that was to laugh out loud and splash her with lukewarm water from the bath tub. A childish response for the child that she was and, even if it was just for a moment, Justine found herself laughing too.


End file.
